[Albert Owen in the Chair] — Science and Research

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 10:20 am on 24 June 2015.

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Photo of Alan Whitehead Alan Whitehead Labour, Southampton, Test 10:20, 24 June 2015

I will attempt to speak even faster, Mr Owen.

In the Marx Brothers film “Go West”, the brothers realise that the train that they are embarked on simply does not have enough fuel on board and they spend quite a long time running through the train and smashing up the carriages to get wood to put in the engine in order to get the train to the station. The train gets to the station, but unfortunately it is not a train any more. That is where we are with research and development, particularly higher education R and D, in this country. We are smashing up our own resource to keep the show on the road. It is a very good show. For example, we have 12% of global citations for 1% of the world population. We are home to 29 of the world’s top 200 universities. We are first in the G8 for scientific papers. It is a very good story to tell, but how long will it continue if we continue to invest less than 0.5% of GDP in public R and D, as we have heard is happening? What does the future hold? Will the train get into the station in a clearly recognisable form and be able to get out of the station for future journeys, especially as other countries are stepping up their efforts? China is aiming for a figure of 2.5% for public R and D by 2020. Sweden is developing substantially its R and D spending as a percentage of GDP. In South Korea, the amount for R and D was 2.3 trillion won in 2012. Many countries are going in precisely the opposite direction from us.

This is not a debate about the future in abstract terms. Let me take as an example my university, the University of Southampton, which is one of two universities in the city. Southampton University is not only among the top universities in the country, but makes, as was recently enumerated, an enormous contribution to the gross value added not just nationally—we are talking about £2 billion gross value added and 26,000 jobs—but regionally and locally. Its research has clear outcomes. For example, the fibre-optic research that Southampton did over a period of years has spawned an entire photonics industry in the UK—it is worth £10 billion and has 70,000 employees—and a substantial photonics cluster in Southampton.

Southampton’s SETsquared initiative brings together a number of universities to incubate businesses and spin-offs from the research done at universities. That is now regarded as the prime business incubator involving the university sector in Europe. In the science park, there are 86 companies; 29 are start-ups or spin-offs.

The research and development funding that the university obtains has a real impact in the local community, in the region and nationally. The question is what will happen if that funding tap is turned off in the future. I am not saying that there have not been substantial capital innovations recently. The £200 million centre for advanced materials research, which we have talked about, represents a substantial capital improvement. It is the business of just keeping the whole thing going that we are falling down on in this country.