European Community (Research and Development)
Opposition Day
11:09 pm
Mr Paddy Ashdown (Yeovil)
I take the point, which echoes what the Minister, too, was saying. Members of all political parties sometimes take comfort in the aphorism, which I may well have invented in front of the mirror myself, that ideas are not responsible for the people who believe in them. One might add that ideas coming into implementation are not responsible for the bureaucrats who murder them.
The Community programme is a great idea, but I hope that in trying to translate it into English, French or any other language so that we may understand and express the grand transcendental notion of the Single European Act the bureaucrats in Brussels will find a better method than the appalling and meaningless prose of the document before us. If the Government intend to hang out for a better way of expressing things in the Berlaymont in Brussels, I am frankly all for it. The Government fairly comment in their explanatory note that there are areas, including
the presentation of information in the document,
in which they look forward to a more professional approach. So do I. In no circumstances do we wish to achieve anything less than the best value for money that we can get out of these programmes, paltry and small though they are. I welcome the Government's decision to drive and push for that.
I hope that the House will forgive me—I have been in it long enough to be a sceptic—but I realise that when the Government use phrases such as value for money they do not mean just value for money; rather it is a front for cuts. That is what is at the heart of this proposal. The evidence is there and it is perfectly plain and I shall seek to touch on it in a moment.
A careful reading of the Minister's elegant prose at the beginnning of the debate will reveal that, when it comes to it—I repeat what the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray) said—it is the British Government, perhaps assisted by the West German Government, who are dragging their feet on this. If I felt that the Minister was being honest and admitting that the Government are dragging their feet to get value for money and better management, I would accede in full to the proposals put forward by the Commission—I would be happy about that—but I have the strong suspicion that the Government are using this as an excuse to cut funds for vital projects in the future.
Despite those caveats, we must welcome the Government's motion, however the last sentence of the Government's motion—I shall read it to the House for fear that there mught be a suggestion that I was out of order—reads:
; and welcomes the United Kingdom's endeavours to secure a cost-effective programme of high quality scientific and technological research with the main emphasis on activities aimed at promoting Europe's industrial competitiveness.
We must substantially disagree with the Government on that point, because research and development in Britain is falling to disastrous levels. Those levels cannot sustain our industrial needs, even our present needs, let alone what they should be. They are well below the levels needed to follow along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West to promote the new technologies.
The Government tell us that research and development should be increasingly industry financed—I do not dissent from that as a concept—but if one considers the figures one will discover that Britain's industry-financed research and development is less than that of Belgium, Italy or Luxembourg. Surely we must do something to turn that round, and if industry does not do so, Government must cajole it to do so or, indeed, take over such financing.
Britain cannot afford to fall below the line on this matter, but that is not the end of the story. It appears that 60 per cent.—a massive sum in comparison to any other European nation—of finance for research and development goes into the defence sector. If we had a decent freedom of information Act we might have a situation similar to that which exists in the United States where a degree of such finance will spin off into the private sector. Our secret system prevents that from happening.
One does not have to accept my word on this but take, for example, the words of Sir George Porter president of The Royal Society and a close friend and mentor of the Prime Minister. He says that morale amongst scientists and technologists in Britain is at the lowest level reached this century and he blames that, fairly and squarely, on cuts in Government funding.
The suggestion made by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) that the Labour party's policies would cause some kind of vast exodus of scientists from Britain came strangely from the mouth of a person whose party has encouraged that exodus to the point that, by the time the next Government come in, one doubts whether there will be a corpus of scientific ability in Britain [HON. MEMBERS: "Come on."] I dare say that that may be slightly over stating the case, but figures will prove my point.
The truth is that, as pointed out by Sir George Porter, 82 fellows of The Royal Society, a premier British scientific institution, are now resident in the United States.
Last year I visited Silicon valley and it struck me as extraordinary and tragic that the second largest population in that area is British, larger than the Hispanic population. It is an area noted for the research and development of high technologies. We are witnessing the beginnings of a brain drain from Britain because of the lack of Government support for research and development.
It was significant that the Minister touched on the question of space research and development. I wonder whether the Minister has read the excellent article by Admiral James Eberle published in The Times on 13 November 1986 in which he said that Britain's lack of any policy towards space research and development was losing the country serious opportunities in that area.
I return to the point that I tried to put to the Minister during his speech, because it is within that context that we must look at this programme. We must remember that the Government made commitments at Milan, Fontainebleau and Luxembourg to increase the resources going into research and development. Calling on them to honour those commitments in no way means that we do not wish to get the best value for money. Those commitments have been made, and it is reasonable for people in this country who study these matters, and for many of our European partners as well, to regard British action following those commitments as reneging upon them and being thoroughly unhelpful.