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BBE/Pre Genesis Conference Reception

Gareth Thomas MP,  Former Minister for Trade, Development and Consumer Affairs (jointly with DFID)
BERR Conference Centre, 1 Victoria Street, London,  08 December 2008

I would like to extend a very warm welcome to everybody – and a particularly warm welcome to those guests that have travelled far and wide from across the globe.

Tonight we have representatives from Australia, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Ghana, Hungary, India, Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, UK, USA, Japan, and Malaysia!

Truly we only expect more delegates for the Olympics in 2012!

To our international visitors who have been busy all day meeting with UK companies and looking for partnerships and collaborations I trust it has been a fruitful day and you can continue your networking tonight and throughout the week.

I’m acutely aware that international collaboration is vitally important in this sector where working together can mean we can prosper better together.

Secondly a very warm welcome to the delegates who will be attending a packed two days of activities – starting with Genesis at the QE2 Conference Centre tomorrow and followed by the Drug Discovery Showcase here in the BERR Conference Centre on Wednesday – the UK’s foremost Biotech event and one our UKTI has been very proud to support for 5 years now.

Also very welcome tonight are our friends from SCRIP – we are delighted to work closely with one of the UK’s foremost Life Science publishers on a variety of projects and wish them well for the SCRIP awards which will be talking place this Wednesday evening.

Best of luck to those nominated award finalists who are with us this evening.

Members of our Life Science marketing Board will be attending and Andrew Hotchkiss, UK MD of Lilly will be presenting an award on behalf of the Board.

This Strategy with UK business and government working together plans to enhance the international trade and inward investment of the biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and healthcare sectors over the next five years.

It has begun its implementation under the strong and wise stewardship of Chris Brinsmead and his colleagues and I commend it to you to get involved.

Getting across the message of UK Life Science success is vital in keeping the UK at the forefront of innovation and commercial success and never more appropriate than at a time of unprecedented difficulties in the global economy as we face now.

There are of course many steps we need to take to tackle the financial crisis, but one step is to continue to champion successful and innovative business sectors – such as life sciences - and our many partnerships and collaboration with friends across the globe.

Even before the global financial crisis it was clear that our economy and our industrial base is changing.

That said it has never been more true that the Life Sciences are crucial to our future.

In the UK we have a lot to be proud of.

• With just one per cent of the world’s population, we produce nine per cent of the world’s scientific papers and receive 12 per cent of all citations. We are also ranked first in terms of papers and citations per head in the G7.
• Our share of PhD awards is up almost 10% within the OECD.
• We have been at the forefront of some of the world’s most important medical, technological and engineering discoveries.
• We have world leading science research universities – three in the world top ten, eight in the top fifty. And the four top universities in Europe.

There  are many individual examples and I look forward to finding out further as the marketing strategy breathes life into the UK offer and spreads this great news about the UK across the world.

I know you all want to network and talk with each other so with no further ado I wish you the very best success for the week and best wishes for Christmas and the coming New Year. Goodnight.