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Rt. Hon. Stephen Byers - Former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Dec 1998 - Jun 2001)The BA Festival of Science - "Prospering Through Science" |
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I am delighted to be here today as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and as Cabinet Minister for Science. I compliment you on the theme of the Festival this year. Prospering through Science is at the heart of the Government?s aim to build a strong economic future for Britain. Science and technology are the key essential elements in today?s knowledge driven economy; both in generating ideas and making the most of them. Our future prosperity and well-being depends on the successful generation and exploitation of research. Government has an important role. We aim to work in partnership with business and the science base, creating the right climate for innovation by:
So today, I want to talk about what the three constituencies - scientists, business and Government - can do together to assure Britain?s future prosperity through science. Stability and tax Our first priority on coming to office was to secure long-term economic stability. We had to put an end to the damaging cycle of boom and bust. The Government has cut borrowing by £32 billion in its first two years and is providing an extra £19 billion investment in education over the next 3 years. We are now laying the foundations for sustainable growth. Inflation is low and expected to remain close to the Government?s target. Interest rates are at their lowest level for 22 years. And now that we have set a course for stability, we are tackling the underlying causes of our low levels of productivity. That is crucial to achieving the Government?s central objective of high and stable levels of growth and employment. You know, better than I, that we live in an astonishing age of possibilities. Only 20 years ago, phone conversations travelled by copper wires which carried less than one page of information per second. Today, a strand of optical fibre as thin as a human hair can transmit in a single second the equivalent of over 90,000 volumes of an encyclopaedia. And in the next 20 years there will be more innovation than at any time in the last 200. So we want more enterprise, more competition and better education. That means better preparation for the future. The sharpest spur to enterprise is competition. Later, I will announce the results of the Government?s £25 million to establish 8 world class centres of enterprise in UK Universities and details of the extra support we are giving to Faraday Partnerships. Because we believe that investment in enterprise is the key to success in the new economy, we have cut corporation tax for large companies to 30%. The small business rate has been cut to 20%. The Budget introduced a new 10% rate for corporation tax for the smallest firms from April 2000. These are the lowest rates of corporation tax ever, and the lowest of any industrialised country. And we have cut small companies? tax from 23p to 20p, with a new starting rate of 10p. Britain needs to create new high tech companies, the Microsofts and Netscapes of tomorrow. So to encourage more businessmen and women, we are introducing a special enterprise management incentive scheme. We have created a targeted tax cut for managers who are prepared to move from safe jobs to risk their time and effort to create wealth for the country. From next year, growing enterprises will be able to offer their key personnel tax-advantaged options over shares up to £100,000. And through our proposed new R&D tax credit, we will give even the newest and smallest business cash help to research and develop its own ideas. At a cost of £150 million, this targeted tax cut ensures that almost one third of small business R&D costs will be underwritten by Government. Investment British science is well regarded worldwide. That is a testament to the commitment and creative talents of our researchers, primarily in Universities, but also in our research institutes and in the private sector. Of course, excellent science needs investment as well. For this reason we made available £1 billion additional funds in the Comprehensive Spending Review to enhance the Science and Engineering Base, which was linked in a unique partnership with the Wellcome Trust providing a further £400m. However, the tax payer expects to see that this funding is well spent - used on the highest quality programmes, and the outcomes fully exploited. The Funding Councils provide the basic infrastructure support on which the other research projects depend, and their funds are distributed on the basis of research quality. This is determined through the five yearly Research Assessment Exercise, and I have been pleased to note the improvements resulting from the consultation exercise on the assessment criteria. We also need a change in entrepreneurial culture to enable the UK to exploit its strong Science and Engineering Base. Cultural change is required both within universities and commercial firms. To stimulate the former, the CSR provided resources for new initiatives such as University Challenge and Science Enterprise Challenge. We are not neglecting business. We are putting in place measures to encourage investment in early stage, high technology, companies through a new Venture Capital Challenge run jointly with the private sector, with £20 million of pump-priming from Government and incentives to promote corporate venturing. But probably our biggest economic challenge of all is to master the new information technologies and maximise the potential of computers, the Internet and Electronic Commerce. Britain has only half the proportion of US Internet users. So we are encouraging employers to lend computers to employees by making it a tax-free benefit and encouraging adults to gain computer skills with discounts of up to 80% on computer courses. Our aim is a single electronic gateway for the public and business to deal with Government, removing the barriers to the growth of E-commerce and facilitating trade in it. We launched ?Computers for All?, a £1.7 billion programme to help small businesses, families, schools and libraries to use computers, modems and related equipment. This will create a national network of 1,000 computer learning centres. Our plan is that by 2002, all schools will be connected to the Internet and most if not all teachers will be computer trained. Government is also spending over £20 billion on Science, including departmental R&D. This demonstrates this Government?s commitment to science. I was delighted that the JIF Joint Executive Committee was also able to fund such a range of excellent proposals in the first round of JIF - 37 awards totalling around £150m across 22 different universities. Not only was this type of investment unprecedented. The partnership arrangements and funding structures were also unique. I believe that this is the first time that 3 funding organisations: OST, the Wellcome Trust and HEFCE, have come together in this way. These are essential investments not only for UK science but for the future of our knowledge driven economy and for the quality of people?s lives. It is just what the UK science base needs to equip it for the next century. Innovation is about scientists and business working together. Today, I am announcing the establishment of eight world class Centres of Enterprise in Britain. The Centres will:
They will also act as centres of excellence for the transfer and exploitation of scientific knowledge and expertise; This important new scheme is one of the key initiatives of this Government aimed at the Science and Engineering base, and I am delighted that it has produced so many excellent proposals. The response has demonstrated the wealth of talent and new ways of thinking within our science and engineering community, and the enthusiasm for enterprise and entrepreneurship. A range of new activities is planned, including teaching and training to support innovation and entrepreneurship and the development of managerial capacity to enable more business start-ups to grow successfully. There will be support to increase the capacity of Higher Education to commercialise innovations arising from science and engineering research, and there will be projects to increase the capacity of business to exploit and acquire such knowledge assets. There will be a regional focus, with the Centres forming strong links with local business, as well as a national impact through the dissemination of best practice in scientific entrepreneurship education. I very much look forward to seeing these centres develop. I am confident that they will make a significant contribution to developing an enterprise and innovation culture in the UK. Catalysts The new centres are just one important example of the many ways in which the Government is facilitating change towards the knowledge driven economy. People in the UK sometimes look enviously at the sort of infrastructure for science and technology that we see in other parts of the world. The key to the success of these regions is that people in business and the academic world work together. They compete in tough markets but learn from each other. We in the UK need to learn how to do this. That is why Foresight is so important. It is the mechanism for bringing together Universities and business to collaborate, so that they can compete. That is why I am delighted too to announce today a call for proposals for the next round of Faraday Partnerships. These partnerships are vital because they encourage groups of universities, research organisations and business to work together to deliver new products and processes, based on high quality research. We?ve announced that we intend to create "a national network" of Faraday Partnerships [para 2.44]. The first four Partnerships were announced just after the election. But the funding basis agreed by the previous Government failed to give them enough resources to achieve their full potential for working with industry. Today, I am correcting that mistake. The four existing Partnerships are being offered resources to restructure their ?industry-facing? activities. They will be able to employ ?technology translators? - people who can work with researchers and business to make sure that science and technology is properly exploited in our firms. They will also have more resources for disseminating information and for core management. Today?s call will see four more Partnerships in fields of technology crucial to the UK. We have not preselected those topics. We want your ideas. We particularly want to see Partnerships strengthening the industry clusters in their localities. We will be offering in total nearly £700,000 per Partnership to put in place the research and exploitation projects that will make a real difference in key sectors. And that money is only the platform on which to bid for major R&D support from public and private sector sources. We expect to see many firms and suppliers of venture capital finance participating in these new initiatives to carry forward research investment into world-beating products and processes. Provided that the Partnerships continue to deliver the high quality of work that we are now seeing, I want to announce further calls in the future. Further rounds will be launched in the coming 3 years to bring the total network of Partnerships to around 20 by 2003. And - looking to the future - it is important for our competitive position and quality of life to focus much more on better preparation for it. That is why the Government has doubled support for Foresight. I am pleased to see the much broader participation in the new round of Foresight. And I welcome the involvement of the Institute of Physics and its Associate Programme looking at how technology might addressed the issues raised by the UK?s ageing population and shifting demographics. By the end of November 2000, Foresight will have produced data, analysis and opinions of future trends; scenarios for the future; and specific action plans aimed at increasing national prosperity and quality life. I hope that you will have been part of that process. Government has a key role to play too in promoting knowledge transfer between science and industry. The TCS involves almost every University in the UK and can make a valuable contribution to Universities? activities in ?Reach Out? and in building entrepreneurship. Every £1 million we spend on TCS creates 70 new jobs, produces ongoing annual profits for firms of around £4 million and results in new training for over 500 company staff. The staff of the universities and research organisations involved also gain insights that feed back into their teaching and research. That is why we intend to double the DTI contribution to TCS over the next 4 years, bringing total Government funding to about £30 million per year, so that we can support around 1,000 TCS programmes at any one time. And that is not all. The £45 million University Challenge Fund awards announced in March allow 15 seed funds to be set up involving 26 universities and 9 other research establishments. Regulating In all of this we cannot ignore the important role of regulation. In every area we must ask whether we are impeding or enhancing the competition I mentioned earlier. The issue is not regulation versus deregulation but rather one of striking the right balance between minimum standards and open and competitive markets. Our White Paper on Consumers, published in July, aims to ensure a strong system for regulation with an appropriate balance of protections. Science, particularly the life sciences, are more than ever the subject of intense public debate. We must recognise that there is often real public concern and that greater understanding of science may increase, not reduce, that anxiety. We believe that developments in the life sciences, especially in the UK?s excellent biotechnology industry, hold out the prospect of real benefits for our quality of life. The Government?s role is to make sure that new developments are introduce safely. But we also want to promote a rigorous public debate on the social implications of those developments. Earlier this year, we completed a thorough review of the expert advice we take on these issues. We decided that we need advice on the broader issues raised by new technology - ethical, social and economic - not just technical assessments of safety. Two new Commissions will be in place by the end of the year to meet this need. We have also introduced new rules on the openness of the committees, which should, where it would help public understanding, hold open meetings, public consensus conferences and workshops, and publish minutes and agendas. When it comes to the use of scientific advice in policy making, Bob May?s Guidelines set out the key principles:
We have taken steps to ensure that the Guidelines are used - and are seen to be used - throughout Government. That is part of our modernising Government agenda. But we all need to show that we will listen to, and take account of, people?s concerns. All here today have a part to play in the debate. The Association has an impressive history of promoting debate. It needs to continue to do that. As the Prime Minister has said in the introduction to your conference programme, in the 21st century, the issue is not so much the public understanding of science, as science understanding the public. Building mutual respect and fostering balanced debate is not going to be easy. But if we are to have a society that can truly prosper through science, it is critically important. I know that you will play your part. |
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Other speeches by Rt. Hon. Stephen Byers - Former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Dec 1998 - Jun 2001)
(the following are available from the archive) |
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