The Rt. Hon. Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Cabinet Minister for Women

The Five Year Plan

We’ve just seen some of your research projects - finding ways to treat MRSA, Hepatitis C and RSV – one of the major causes of croup.

Arrow is a great example of how what can be achieved when you bring together science, innovation and business together. Here we see the talents of scientists being used to find solutions to the big public health challenges, but also generating jobs and economic prosperity for Britain.

And it’s also great to see such a young, diverse workforce with so many number of senior women scientists.

Our country has enjoyed seven years of economic prosperity. Britain has never worked so productively, created so much wealth and generated so many jobs. For the first time in half a century, Britain has been growing faster, for longer, than any of the G7. As a result, we have overtaken France to become the fourth largest economy in the world.

But we cannot afford to stand still. Politically, economically, environmentally and socially, our world is being transformed.

China and India have joined the world economy. Their growth rate is three times higher than Europe’s, their population and potential consumer market five times bigger, their wages close to a tenth of ours. And Ten new countries have joined the European Union – all with wage costs far lower than ours – and others are queuing up to join.

So what is our response? We can’t respond by holding back technological change or competing on cost.

In a fiercely competitive global environment, the challenge for any modern nation is how to create knowledge, tap it and then transform it into wealth and jobs. Just as you are doing successfully here today

The good news is Britain is also successful. We are creating a new industrial policy around the knowledge-based economy, high in skills and embracing innovation, science and technology.

By 2007, our spending on scientific research and infrastructure will have more than doubled since 1997 to £3.3 billion. New businesses are starting up at the rate of 500 a day.

We attract more inward investment than any other European country and our scientists are the most successful in the world.

Knowledge-based business services have accounted for over half of our job growth in the past two decades. We lead Europe in our share of value-added coming from knowledge-based and hi-tech businesses. Put simply, the world increasingly wants to buy what we are good at producing.

So Britain is working, and we should all be proud of it. But we can’t stand still. We need to do even better in future.

That is why today we are publishing the DTI Five year programme, Creating Wealth from Knowledge.

A programme that recognises a nation's wealth and prospects are determined by how well it creates, manages and uses knowledge.

That places science innovation at the heart of Government strategy to secure Britain’s future prosperity. And today we’re sending a strong signal to scientists around the world that the UK is the place to come to carry out research in leading edge areas – such as nanotechnology and stem cell research and other medical research.

So my department - the DTI of the 21st Century - must be as much a Department for Technology and Innovation as a Department for Trade and Industry. Our new industrial policy needs a new DTI. We reject the command-and-control of the 1970s and the laissez-faire of the 1980s. Instead, we need to be more streamlined, more flexible, and smarter – a DTI that knows when to help markets, and when to let business lead.

So to promote science, technology and innovation we will:

· Invest £370million in emerging technologies through the DTI Technology Strategy.
· Establish a multi-million pound fund for high profile, “Newton Awards” to reward achievements in solving major public policy challenges through critical breakthroughs in science and technology.
· And we will directly intervene to protect those being targeted by animal rights extremists.

We want to build a skills-based knowledge economy, where every individual can contribute their full potential – and gets the full benefit in return. And you will know that in the global war for science, as well as supporting British scientists and their work, we need to attract the very best scientific brains to Britain from around the world.

So we will:

· Better target the Highly Skilled Migration programme in order to attract more global entrepreneurial talent and academic expertise to the UK.
· Establish a comprehensive policy towards the recognition of foreign credentials.
· Work with the Home Office to develop policies to attract and retain foreign students who successfully complete a PhD in a ‘shortage’ subject at an accredited UK university.

In today’s world, the countries that create a climate where science and innovation flourishes will succeed.

The UK already has an edge: world class universities; a tradition of science and research; a dynamic and flexible labour market; and world-beating firms in new technologies and high value-add services.

But in the next five years we pledge to do more. More to strengthen British science. More to build on the success of companies like Arrow. And more to put innovation and technology at the core of our industrial strategy for success in the global knowledge technology.

A bold ambition, and one that I’m sure you will help us to achieve as take forward our programme for the next five years.