Julian Smith
Main Page: Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)
Vince Cable
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are particular problems in the north-east of England, but they are far from new. I was in his constituency a few weeks ago when I visited Durham and Tyneside. The great potential of the north-east is that it is a major manufacturing area of the UK with a strong export intensity. If we can achieve the rebalancing of the economy, as we are determined to do, the north-east could be one of the main beneficiaries. I am happy to meet him to talk further about that.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
The Government are having a really successful run-up to this year’s G8; $4.5 billion was pledged for global malnutrition last Saturday and there has been a highly successful science summit this week. Will the Science Minister update the House with further details of the science summit?
Mr Willetts
We had an excellent summit of the G8 Science Ministers at the Royal Society yesterday. We agreed that new global challenges such as antibiotic resistance needed to be tackled, and we committed ourselves to the publication of research and data that are publicly funded.