Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:14 pm on 8 February 2017.
My Lords, will the Minister acknowledge that one of the best ways of increasing productivity is to invest in higher education and research and development innovation? Would he also agree that we underinvest as a percentage of GDP in our higher education, compared with the OECD EU average, and way under America, and yet have the best universities in the world? When it comes to R&D innovation, we invest 1.7% of GDP compared with 2.8% in the United States and Germany. We would have to invest an extra £20 billion a year just to catch up with them.