Brexit, Science and Innovation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:05 pm on 6 September 2018.

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Photo of Jeremy Lefroy Jeremy Lefroy Conservative, Stafford 1:05, 6 September 2018

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said. I declare an interest: I am a member of the board of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium. Does he agree that in attracting the highest calibre scientists and researchers from around the world, any legislation needs to look at the qualifications and experience of those people, not just a purely salary-based criterion? So often, science does not pay enough; the salaries are not high enough. We might find that if an arbitrary limit of £30,000, £35,000 or £40,000 a year was set, we would be excluding the best and the brightest, simply because scientists do not work for lots of money—they work for other, higher ideals.