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National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Increase of Endowment) Order 2006

My Lords, I am happy to follow these two contributions. NESTA is one of the Government’s unsung successes. It has been able to identify areas where no other conventional means of support for business start-up have been available. It has often been able to support activities which otherwise would have fallen between the cracks of various forms of government support. The examples given to us include the work of Dr Kevin Fong, who was doing work in anaesthetics at University College London where the multi-disciplinary character of the work he was engaged in did not attract funding from any of the normal research sources. Getting the support of NESTA has enabled him to continue with his research work. This is investing in what could be called exceptional UK talent. Equally, it is fair to say that a number of the creative entrepreneurs coming out of our arts colleges and similar places would become distinguished crafts people if they were able to get the advice or the business start-up assistance to go on. Mark Bickers, a glassmaker who went on the Creative Pioneer course is now operating on a self-sustaining basis, selling to places such as Liberty. We sometimes think that business support is for very large operations or ones which of themselves will create a great number of jobs. But one of the great and telling lessons of the past couple of decades has been the significance of small business and the way in which small businesses take on two or maybe three employees and account for a sizeable amount of the increase in our employment rates. However, it is also fair to say that, where the money has gone in, in a number of instances it has been able to attract support from angels and venture capitalists on a ratio of £1 which would attract £5 from anywhere else. I imagine that the success of that is one of the driving forces behind the Government’s review because it was set up with money from the Lottery—a source not available for any other purpose in this way—and it could be reaching the point of self-sustaining growth as an endowment. It is to that that we should look to the future. It is exciting that we have made this fairly modest contribution—because in terms of industrial support, £15 million per annum is not a massive sum. But Jonathan Kestenbaum, Chris Powell, the chair and their colleagues will be able to look forward to five years of sustained activity in which they will be able to establish the endowment as a means of giving young people—particularly young people involved in the creative areas, the grey areas of industrial and business activity—assistance and support. Just affording them the mentoring and network facilities that the endowment gives will help people who are on their own. They are often bewildered by the range of business opportunities that are supposed to be there and they never quite know how to take advantage of them, but they will be able to do so because of this endowment. It is a credit to the ingenuity of the first Labour government and it will be a credit to successive Labour governments because the success of our economy will come in large measure through the kind of work that the beneficiaries of the endowment have been able to take forward. A dynamic economy requires creative industry and creative industry hitherto has not been able to attract the kind of support that it is now getting, not only through the endowment but through the credibility which the endowment provides. It enables these individuals to go elsewhere and get the additional support that they need to make their businesses grow. I welcome the Government’s courage in providing £75 million over the next five years and I welcome this order tonight.