Economy: Growth

Lord Broers Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the independent figures that have been published alongside the Budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility today show that employment will grow in every year of the forecast period from 28.8 million in 2010-11 up to 30.1 million in 2015-16. Growth will also grow from 1.2 per cent in 2011 to 2.3, 2.8 and 2.9 per cent and then, still above trend, to 2.7 per cent in 2015-16.

[Lord Broers]

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that, if we are to have industrial growth, it is essential that the Government strongly support research budgets in engineering and science? Does he also agree that the recent delay in the funding decisions on some of our largest and most powerful science projects is highly disruptive to those projects? I declare my interest as chairman of the Diamond Light Source, which is Britain’s largest science project and strongly supports industry.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, today my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the spending review will be presented on20 October. As we go through the spending review, it is clearly important that the long-term prosperity and growth of this country are underpinned by appropriate decisions. We have announced today, as I said, that infrastructure will not be cut further. I take the point, put by the noble Lord, Lord Broers, that science spending is also very important to underpinning the long-term growth of the UK.