---

Further and Higher Education (Employer Engagement)

: I see the Minister nodding, and that is a great relief to me. Sometimes, we labour under that pretence, and that leads to madness. I can see the arguments, and I am sure that everybody here can too, for spreading research funding around and for ensuring that everybody has the potential to benefit. The argument about serendipity is that one never knows what will sprout if one chucks seeds about—there is probably a biblical text about it and my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings will probably furnish me with it in due course. We should also have regard to utility—the Government must be conscious of the need to maximise return to the taxpayer. That is why the top 15 Russell group universities receive some 60 per cent. of research funding and—I think that this is correct—the top four receive 29 per cent. of the total research budget. That is an invidious figure, but I am not convinced that it is the wrong way to do things.