Research and Development Funding

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on setting the scene so very well, and other hon. Members on their contributions. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response. It is a pleasure to speak for the first time in a Westminster Hall debate that she will respond to.

One of the many lessons that can learned from coronavirus is that for the brightest scientific minds in the world—I say this unashamedly, because we all believe it and evidential base for it is very clear—the special ingredient is governmental support. That has made it happen. The Government deserve credit for the way the coronavirus vaccine has been found, and for the initiative, power and strength that they put in to make sure that happened. The roll-out of the vaccine is proof of the brilliance and expertise of our scientists. We should put that on the record and thank them. I am not a scientist—I never could be, as I would not have the brains for it— but many are. Thank the Lord that we have them and that they have been able to find the antidote for covid.

We need the right people with the right training and the right equipment to make the groundbreaking discoveries that we are capable of and to achieve what we need with Government backing. This debate is about ensuring we have that. That is what we are trying to achieve. We all know that we are in difficult financial times, and my party and I have backed the Government’s Budget and plans. However, there are a few issues. We need to invest in healthcare and in research and development. Those are the two issues that I want to speak about very quickly.

The UK Government have committed to investing £22 billion in UK R&D by 2024-25 as part of the target of 2.4% of GDP by 2027 and 3% in the long term. The Government have always been committed to R&D, but I want to pose a few questions. I do it gently and constructively, by the way. I always try to do that. That is the way I try to work with my contributions.

I read the briefing by the Royal Society, which outlined what it felt must be committed to enable our research and development to continue to provide the breakthroughs that coronavirus has shown we are capable of achieving. There are many reports of mutant strains, and we need to ensure that we have the people in place to respond to whatever the future may bring, in the way that we have in the past. I personally believe that we will have to live with covid-19. I think it will be like getting our flu injections, which I do every year. I have had my vaccine, and one hon. Gentleman said that his is coming. It is good to have that in place.

The Royal Society has said that further raids on the UK research and development budget will create a funding gap that undermines the Government’s commitment to increasing UK investment in R&D to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. We realise the potential of that to improve lives. It is good to have the research, but it is also good for jobs, the economy and the wages that go with it. Since then, the Government have confirmed the UK’s association with Horizon Europe—a valuable commitment to international scientific collaboration—but they have not given an assurance that the money to pay for it will be additional to the funds already committed to the research and development budget, so we seek a response to that. The Government previously recognised that and committed to addressing the funding gap that would open up if the UK did not associate with Horizon Europe. The payment for association is now taken from the existing research and development budget, so the Government are creating a new funding gap.

I want to speak about health, but I just want to give a quick plug to the battery initiatives. In my constituency—back home in Strangford—we are going to have a couple of those coming through, and I believe there is the potential for us to drive that. I want to take the opportunity to get clarity—we are not robbing Peter to pay Paul here, I presume. It is not enough to say that we are sewing it in, but the money for this year is for little more than a membership pack.

Will the Minister also confirm that there will be collaboration between universities and companies? Queen’s University in Belfast has been one of the great exponents of how businesses and universities can work in partnership to improve health. We have cancer care in Queen’s University. We had the Prime Minister in Northern Ireland just last week, and he was saying that very thing. The Prime Minister recognises that, and we as a Parliament should recognise it and try to push on it. I want to ensure that Queen’s University has the continued funding to continue to deliver its research on cancer and many other issues.

I look to the Minister to clarify and underline what the precise delivery of the Government commitment looks like for the future of R&D. We need that, and the Minister and the Government need to deliver it.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner)— a fellow Cambridge city MP. I have the south of the city. It is fantastic to have this debate on this issue, which is really important for all the reasons he highlighted. It is enormously important for the country but also for my constituency.

Research and development is clearly absolutely vital for economic growth. We are a largely knowledge-based economy. It is a growing sector globally. It is growing far faster than general economic growth. It is absolutely right that we position ourselves as a science superpower. I fully welcome the Government’s target of R&D being 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

One thing that the pandemic has shown, and that we have always known in South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge, is that we are already a life sciences superpower. We do more testing per capita than any G20 country. The AstraZeneca vaccine, which the hon. Gentleman talked about, has been rolled out not just in the UK, but around the world, despite some wobbles in Europe at the moment, which I am sure they will get over. In my constituency, the Wellcome Sanger Institute does more genome sequencing of the covid virus than the rest of the world put together—that is a huge achievement.

The life sciences are the largest R&D sector in the whole economy. In 2019, it brought in £2.8 billion of investment, up tenfold since 2012. Although there are great amounts of private investment there, there is a huge role for Government support. The reason for that is that in the life sciences, there are often very long lead times. After the research and development stage, many years can pass before getting any revenues. There is also a lot of fundamental blue-skies research that is not necessarily directly related to commercial opportunity.

I want to mention bit.bio, a start-up company in my constituency that I happened to meet virtually yesterday. It has the technology to use the DNA from a human hair to create every type of cell in the human body in a functioning way. It has created functioning human muscles from a human hair cell in a laboratory, not for Frankenstein reasons, but because those human cells can be used to treat a lot of diseases. The company is at least two years away from any commercial application, however.

[Jim Shannon]

Could they use my hair?

[Anthony Browne]

They might be able to use the hon. Gentleman’s hair—he has some left and they could use the DNA.

The Government support the life sciences industry, through the biomedical catalyst, with £30 million a year— that is a very welcome and successful scheme. An Ipsos MORI report last year showed that for every £1 of Government money put in, it leveraged £5 of private sector investment. The 150 companies that won grants from the scheme have raised £710 million. That is a 5:1 ratio compared with a 2:1 ratio across Government funding for R&D in general, so it is a far better sector in which to leverage private sector investment. Six firms in my constituency have won grants from the biomedical catalyst in recent years, and I thank the Government for that.

One sign of success is that the quality of applicants has increased dramatically. Five years ago, one third of projects of sufficiently good quality got funding, but now only one in 25 does, because there are so many high-quality applicants. That means that there is a lot more opportunity to fund, and if the Government wanted to maximise the leverage of private sector investment across R&D in all sectors, they should increase the budget of the biomedical catalyst from £30 million to, say, £100 million. There are definitely enough projects there.

I have some good news and some bad news about what is happening at the moment—the Minister and I have exchanged letters on this. The biomedical catalyst has had a competition this year, and has decided the winners, three of which are in my constituency. They are poised to make the announcement about their great funding so that they can go out to investors and get more private sector investment in, showing what a triumph both the Government programme and their technology are. The bad news is that the winners cannot be announced because the biomedical catalyst has no budget as we speak. The money is there in BEIS overall, but there are Departmental negotiations going on. In the industry as a whole, that has led to a fear that no news is bad news, and that the rug is going to be pulled from under the whole scheme. The industry is finding the silence rather ominous.

My plea to the Minister is to prove the worriers wrong. Will she announce the budget commitment to the biomedical catalyst, unlock the investment in the companies in my constituency and across the UK, and help Britain and South Cambridgeshire retain their position as life sciences superpowers of the world?