Lord Bilimoria
Main Page: Lord Bilimoria (Crossbench - Life peer)UK Industry: Competitiveness
Lord Bilimoria Excerpts
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, would the Minister agree that we are all very proud that a British university, Cambridge, has won more Nobel prizes than any other university in the world? However, would he also agree that that is in spite of this country underfunding research and development expenditure as a proportion of GDP? We spend less than both the EU and OECD averages. We spend half of what a country like South Korea spends. Do the Government not believe that we should be targeting to spend a proportion of GDP at least equivalent to the EU or OECD average to maintain our competitiveness? Otherwise, we are going to be penny wise and pound foolish.
Lord Popat
My Lords, this issue has been raised by the noble Lord in the past. Education is our fourth largest export earning. I agree with the noble Lord that we need to spend more money both on research at universities and on further investment in training provided by businesses. I will take the noble Lord’s point into account and will be happy to ask my colleague in the office to write to him to see what investment we are making in research at our universities.