Science and Technology: Economy

Lord Markham Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for securing this important debate. We on this side feel fortunate to have the Minister in his new role. His previous role in this area is very relevant and we welcome him to his first debate. We are delighted to have someone with such knowledge in his position.

I hope to conduct my speech in the constructive manner proposed by the noble Viscount. We all know and recognise the incredible impact that science and technology has in this country. The 4% that it is estimated to add to the economy is a massive boost. We can all point to massive scientific successes. One of the biggest illustrations of this is that, of the 10 Formula 1 teams, six are based in the UK. You cannot get more cutting-edge science and technology than Formula 1. We have those that noble Lords will know—great British names such as McLaren, Williams and Aston Martin—but also other well-known brands such as Mercedes, Renault and Red Bull. Yes, those foreign brands’ Formula 1 teams are located in the UK because they know that we are the best and most cutting-edge.

I will take the limited time available to talk about the area I know best from my former health role: life sciences. We have some fantastic examples in this field too. Google’s AlphaFold project will see many breakthroughs. The Government’s involvement in Covid and the Minister’s involvement in the Moderna deal that followed are a good example of putting long-term relationships in place.

But what I have seen all too often at first hand is what I call the UK disease: we are very good at innovation but pretty poor at the rollout. I saw this particularly in medtech. The joke I always heard is that the NHS has more pilots than British Airways. Those pilots were good in their innovation but so often fell down when it came to rolling out across the network. We would often see them lost to the US, which would come in with the funding and the rollout programme, and we would see a brain drain of our expertise.

One of the last things we tried to do was introduce what we called a medtech rules-based pathway, which tried to provide a pathway so that there was a way that exciting parts of medical technology could be rolled out through the NHS under a set of well-known rules. We were consulting on that around the time we left government. I would be pleased if the Minister could update me on the findings—it would be super to have that by letter if he does not have them to hand.

Another area was the data for R&D. As we all know, AI is only as good as the data that it comes from. We are fortunate in the medical space to have probably the best data in the world, as I have been told by many people, dating back to 1948—primary care, secondary care and biobank data. We were working on a project to bring this all together to create the possibility of a Silicon Valley of life sciences. I would be delighted to hear where we are in the progress of that project.

I end on a note of caution. A £1 investment achieving a £3 to £4 return is a case of modern-day alchemy, but it requires deep pockets, long-term investment and hard work to achieve those rewards. Anything that diminishes those rewards will be a threat. My concerns about the latest Budget, dare I say, are the moves on tax increases. The crowding out of private finance that the OBR is concerned about puts this at risk, so I hope that we are careful and make sure that we do not kill the golden goose that we have in this space.