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Science Budget

I judged my willingness to give way well, because that is an extremely powerful point and I shall do no more than simply endorse it. It shows that our universities and the Government need to be flexible in how VAT is applied. We are in a very competitive situation. Our historic strengths in science, technology and engineering are still there to be admired, but the challenge will be greater in the next few years. The outpourings from universities in India and China are getting greater, and more importantly those universities are getting shrewder. The Indians have gone well beyond just being a nation to which we outsource. There is now creativity in those countries. In my report, I cited the chief executive of Novartis in China. The company had put £100 million into a new research centre in Shanghai, and I said to him, ““But surely there is not yet the depth and understanding of research in Shanghai to justify that.”” He said that I had missed the point, which was that a lot of the Chinese diaspora that had spread to America was beginning to come back, at least for part of the year, and the company wanted to be there to capture it. These are exciting times for Chinese universities, and we must ensure that they are exciting times for our leading British universities as well. That implies an even more radical look at how we fund research and how we tie basic research to capturing the innovation that is possible in our society in a competitive world. So two cheers for the Government, and credit to them for the money that has been spent on the science base, but I add the caveat that they could be doing something much more radical. Given that they might have only another 18 months, they should get on with it.