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Science Budget

Yes, it is a competitive market, but who makes the competition? I do not feel that scientists—at least not the ones I know—have ever been competing with each other. We compete with each other over who gets their paper in Nature or in the journal of this or that institute. However, the quality of the paper that someone publishes is important, too, and not just to their kudos, but to the world in general, because it is more read. One point that the hon. Gentleman did not make is that papers now do not have just one or names on them. All the best papers have about 20, 30 or 40 names on them of people who have interacted in different ways in that subject—one can look in Nature to see that. There are very few lone wolves these days. We have moved on from the days of the magic amateur monk who discovered breeding problems in peas. Science is big now and it needs money. We no longer have rich Darwins who can sail round the world, make wonderful observations in that amateurish way and take a long time to publish their work. Things are not like that anymore. After all, Darwin published only because Alfred Russel Wallace was breathing down his neck and was going to publish anyway, so he had to beat him to the punch. The world is different now, but there is still a bit of amateurishness in our science. We tend to think that we are very clever, but competition and, even more so, co-operation are very important. Let me finish by saying something about the regional development agencies, of which there has been some criticism. The ones of which I have experience—in the north-west and north-east—are magic. The way they have interacted with the universities and the community is great. The situation is very different in the east of England, where we have had our moment in the sun. I wanted to make Norwich into a science city, which would not cost a penny—indeed, that is mentioned in the report that the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) talked about. There is a cluster of really good centres of excellence around Norwich. It is the same in Dundee, Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and Durham. We can go all round the country and see places known as science cities. Some people think that ““science city”” is just something that is put up on a sign at the entrance to a city, but it is not. It is a concept involving people working together in industry and science, and in centres in which young people learn about science. It also involves schools that are scientifically erudite in the sense that they have special status. There are schools that specialise in engineering, for example. In the Select Committee on which I serve, I remember asking a representative of the Royal Academy how many special schools did engineering. The answer was, ““I don't know.”” I would have thought that that would be one of the first things that a member of the Royal Academy would want to know. Surely they would want to know whether there were enough schools of that kind and whether we were encouraging enough young people to go into that field. Surely they should be asking what the Royal Academy should be doing to make that happen. We need the science city concept, and regional development agencies that do not just play the game of co-operating but actually do so. We must also ensure that we do not have any more instances of science centres closing. There are 20 per cent. cuts being made in Glasgow, for example, by a nationalist party that works on the basis of its supreme excellence in everything—because things happen differently in Scotland—yet it is closing science centres. We have a real battle on our hands right across the board. I believe that the science budget should have been quadrupled and, by gosh, as long as some of us are still breathing, it will be.