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Employment, Universities and Skills and Housing

I am hoping to come to that later on in my speech, if the hon. Gentleman is still here. Although the amount of science funding has doubled, in terms of the percentage of gross domestic product, the level of funding is still only half that spent in America. We have crept up closer to many of our European partners, but the Government need to spend even more money on research and development, particularly at a time when we are entering a recession. I believe that the Government have recognised that fact, and that they will introduce a further funding increase after the comprehensive spending review. We are now ahead of Japan in terms of metrics, which is an astonishing success. We are second in the world when it comes to innovation in our universities, however we measure it—be it the quality of publications, the number of publications or citations of publications. We are doing extremely well. I want to refer briefly to the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills. The word ““science”” is included in the name of the Committee, but, sadly, we have not yet got the Secretary of State to add it to the title of the Department, but we are still working on him. The former Select Committee on Science and Technology was able to carry out cross-cutting inquiries across agencies and Departments. We have had a debate on such inquiries before, and I shall not labour the point this evening, but we did some detailed work in that Committee under the two Chairmen in post when I was a member of it. However, the remit of the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills is too broad because although there are many matters that we would like to investigate, for example, the regional development agencies and role of departmental chief scientific advisers, it is clear that we will not get round to them. Whereas the Science and Technology Committee largely met on Wednesday mornings, and occasionally on Monday afternoons, the volume of work forces the DIUS Committee to meet on Wednesday mornings and regularly on Monday afternoons, which is putting extreme pressure on Committee members. Membership of the Committee includes those who represent the education side of the debate and those from the science and technology side, which causes tensions in the Committee. I still believe that a cross-cutting science and technology Select Committee would be better, and that education and skills would be better dealt with separately. The excuse for not continuing with the Science and Technology Committee last year was that we could not stand the pressure of setting up another Select Committee. But we have just set up regional Select Committees, and we have set up another departmental Select Committee in the shape of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change. I favour a separate Department for Energy and Climate Change, but the work of Members has increased, and I cannot see why such an excuse was used last year when it was decided not to continue with the cross-cutting Science and Technology Committee. On Friday, I was at the life sciences department of Manchester university. I am paired with a member of that university through the excellent Royal Society pairing scheme, as are many other hon. Friends and Members of the Opposition; it is an excellent scheme. When I went to the campus of the university, and cast my mind back to 1997 to compare and contrast with how things were, I found that there was no comparison. There are a large number of new buildings on the Manchester university site, and that is not just the case for that university, but for Durham, Hull and my university in Bolton. Every university has erected a tremendous number of new buildings, and carried out a lot of refurbishment of existing buildings, particularly the laboratories, which desperately needed refurbishing. We have had joint infrastructure fund money and science research investment fund money and that funding shows on a visit to a technology or science department in universities. It is my impression that younger academics, and some of the middle-management academics, do not yet appreciate what I call the tectonic plate shifts that have occurred in our science, engineering and technology policy in the past 12 months or so. First, we have established three new institutes. In a good move, the Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research has rightly brought together the research carried out by the Medical Research Council and the national health service. The Energy Technologies Institute was created for obvious reasons, and we now have the Technology Strategy Board because we have not been very good at translating our superb innovations into reality as products for export. I shall come back to that point shortly. There has been a shift from the physical sciences towards the Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, too, which some physical scientists are complaining about. The universities received the full economic costs of the research grants—FEC—and that is now at a level of 90 per cent, which is also welcome. Under the previous Administration, there was no money to support well-founded laboratories. When visiting laboratories today, I can see where the money has been invested. The Government have rightly created postgraduate training centres and set up six grand challenges on energy, living with environmental change, global threats to security, ageing, the digital economy and nanoscience through engineering to application. All those extra creations have come into being during an 18-month period and, although extra money has been given to the science budget, unfortunately pressure has been put on programme grants and responsive mode grants. Members of the DIUS Committee have received a lot of criticism because young academics cannot get research grants to get their programmes off the ground. The only way to conduct research is either for them to do it with their own hands, or do what my generation did—work with a professor. That would not give those young academics much independence. In the case of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, fewer than 10 per cent. of the alpha-funded grant bids are funded. The frustration can be felt; I felt it when going round Manchester university on Friday. I am going to Liverpool next week, and I visited Bolton university a few weeks ago. People have ideas, but they are really frustrated that they cannot get responsive mode funding from any of the research councils, except perhaps the Medical Research Council or the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, to carry out that vital blue-sky research. We ignore such research at our peril, because the people doing the big programmes—such programmes are necessary and I support them—will have no young scientists if young scientists cannot start on independent research in universities that are perhaps not part of the Russell group.