David Willetts gave a speech at the Royal Institution on Friday in which he sketched out his approach to science. What follows below is an annotated version of the speech, with my comments in red. Links to other blogs on this are at the bottom. I’ll be digesting all this and summarising my thoughts in Research Fortnight later this week.
On what both he and I consider the big question, how to get economic growth out of the UKs excellent science base, he is refreshingly pragmatic about the ra-ra-ra stuff we tend to hear about excellence, world class universities and Nobel prizes.
***
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
Science, Innovation and the Economy
The Rt Hon David Willetts MP, Minister for Universities and Science
Royal Institution, London
9 July 2010
Good morning.
It may not have been a great Summer for football but it has certainly been a great Summer for science.
This speech is about “science” not “research”. The social sciences and the humanities hardly get a look in. The life sciences neither. Its all very “hard”, very physics, very 1950s.
The Royal Society has celebrated its 350th anniversary in great style with a display on the South Bank that showcases pioneering British science. The BBC has been doing a fantastic job, from Martin Reess Reith Lectures on radio to Michael Mosleys “The Story of Science” and Brian Coxs “Wonders of the Solar System” on television. Exciting and accessible science books are spread out across the tables at Waterstones. And here, at the Royal Institution, youve been highlighting the potential of nanotechnologies – as well as holding lectures on the measurable shortcomings of the England football team.
So to be science minister is an extraordinary privilege for me. Indeed, so much is going on that its not possible for me to cover every significant issue in science policy in this, my first major science speech. There are areas which we can only really advance once the comprehensive spending review has been concluded. I can assure you of my commitment to the dual support system and the Haldane principle, and I hope to reflect further on both in another speech. I do believe in concentration on excellent research – and excellence is to be found in individual departments.
The most important part of the speech is almost smuggled in here (and Willetts was more explicit on this at the preceding press briefing, reported in Research Fortnight). Research “excellence” an objective everyone can agree on, but how should it be interprated? With spending cuts looming, the Russell Group has been waging a campaign to get the government to focus on sustaining “world class universities”. Its chairman has gone so far as to argue the UK needs only 25-30 research universities [Research Fortnight, 2 December 2009]. This campaign arises from the Russell Groups disappointing performance in the last RAE. Its new competitors in places like Wolverhampton did very well, driving down the share of QR in England going to the RG. Worse, the RG universities are now stuck between the rock of Oxbridge and the hard place of the new competitors. Tweaking the funding formula for QR to increase concentration can take money from the new competitors – but it all ends up at Oxbridge, not at the RG places that are really feeling the squeeze. If the allocation of QR is based on a formula using the current RAE results, there is no way out of this conundrum. Hence the campaign to shift funding from supporting departments (the current system) to supporting universities (the RG aim). Willetts has just shot this down. (While it takes stock of this snub, the RG chose not to mention it in its response to the speech.)
To take this particular debate further we have to be clear about the conditions in which excellence actually thrives and how much research funding we will be able to distribute.
Most importantly, I recognise my deep responsibility to the scientific community in these austere times. Good things were achieved over the past decade and I salute the achievements of David Sainsbury, for example. But the Government was borrowing too much, even before the Crash. It was a debt-driven boom. It never was sustainable but, as so often, it took a recession to reveal the uncomfortable truth. Whichever party won the last election would have had to face difficult decisions. The previous Government left no long-term spending plan – only a commitment to save £600m from the Higher Education, Science and Research budgets by 2012-13, without specifying where these savings came from.
I recognise that countries like the US, Canada and France have reacted to recession by spending more on science. But their public finances are in much better shape than ours. The US governments deficit as a percentage of GDP in 2009 was 10.2 per cent. Canadas was two per cent, Frances six per cent, Germanys 1.6 per cent. Ours was 11.1 per cent.#
CASE has been arguing for the government to increase spending as a percentage of GDP. This I think makes clear that the government is not going to buy that, which is hardly a surprise as the CASE rule would put science in a better position than the protected NHS or DFID. But the argument given here opens up I think potential for science to argue with a decent chance of success for a less ambitious but valuable target – that spending on science (or “research” or “research and technology” according to taste) should increase as a percentage of government spending. This I think should be the focus of campaigning in the run up to the CSR.
And when I meet ministers from other governments at the EU Council on Competitiveness and Research, they are just as preoccupied with saving money as we are. That is why the cost of the Iter programme for nuclear fusion was the top concern of fellow minsters at the last meeting. These are austere times for us all. But this Government wants science to emerge from this period to be strong, sustainable and effective. Vince Cable and George Osborne both understand the key role of science, technology and innovation in rebalancing the economy.
What the coalition actually means by “rebalancing” the economy is very much up for grabs at the moment. It could lead to a lot, or very little. Yet there is no doubt it is the rhetorical term that is at the heart of the coalitions attempts to convince the public that its economic policies will generate growth as well as balance the books. So its helpful for Willetts to say science, technology and innovation are key to that. Cable has said much the same. It will be even more helpful if they can get Osborne to say it in public, too.
I am an optimist about sciences capacity to do this, because the deep forces driving its growth and popularity are as powerful as ever. A very important stimulus for scientific advance is, quite simply, technology. We talk of scientific discovery enabling technical advance, but the process is much more inter-dependent than that. For example, imaging technology is driven by the demands of astronomers, and then enables those same astronomers to make new discoveries. Its because of this process that weve been able to view this week those awe-inspiring images of the oldest light in the cosmos, gathered by the Planck space telescope. Meanwhile it allows medical imaging to advance along the way, almost as a by-product of our age old desire to look into the heavens.
In my speech at Birmingham University in May, I spoke of links between the academic and the vocational, the conceptual and the physical. We are not always good at this – we have world-class particle physicists at the Large Hadron Collider but sadly not many British engineers helped to build it. But there are other areas where these links between British science and technology are stronger. We not only have distinguished astronomers, but it was scientists and engineers at Cardiff University who produced the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver for Herschel and Planck. This combination of scientific research and technological advance creates extraordinary dynamism, both intellectual and commercial. I see it as one of my tasks to strengthen these links. That is why one of my ambitions is to try to ensure that the exciting intellectual advance of nuclear fusion – we are world leaders at Culham – also drives British technological and industrial development.
Taken together, all these examples seem oddly narrow. The general theme is the linkage of science and technology. But all the technologies are technology-applied-to-science arising from a linear development. And the weight of physcis examples. Its all very 1950s (though he does broaden things out in the para below). Perhaps thats what he thinks scientists want to hear?
This does not just apply to the natural sciences but to social sciences too. Howard Davies is right to remind us of their importance. Im encouraged by the progress were making in understanding human behaviour. Understanding social mobility, individual well being, stable families: these are challenges where strong social science can really contribute. My own recent book, The Pinch, on fairness between the generations drew on insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology and game theory. The birth cohort studies of 1958 and 1970, reinvigorated by the millennium cohort study, have fundamentally shaped the debate about social mobility in Britain. Well being is a hot topic in Whitehall at the moment. We just held a valuable seminar in my department, with contributions from health experts, social scientists, psychologists and economists.
More broadly, as society becomes more diverse and cultural traditions increasingly fractured, I see the scientific way of thinking – empiricism – becoming more and more important for binding us together. Increasingly, we have to abide by John Rawlss standard for public reason – justifying a particular position by arguments that people from different moral or political backgrounds can accept.
This I find intriguing. I would be very interested to see Willetts expand on his argument that science is essentially a Conservative form of thinking.
And coalition, I believe, is good for government and for science, given the premium now attached to reason and evidence. We have already offered a science induction for new MPs, and ensured that the principles of scientific advice to government are referred to in the new ministerial code. In addition the Governments Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, has updated his guidelines on the use of scientific and engineering advice in policy making.
These arguments are a bit weak. The work on the principles and code was all under way under Labour.
You might say that science is doing so well in the public sphere that the greatest risks it faces are complacency and arrogance. Crude reductionism puts people off. Scientists can morph from admired public luminaries into public enemies, as debates over nuclear power and GM made clear. And yet I remain optimistic here too. The UK Research Councils had the foresight to hold a public dialogue about ramifications of synthetic biology ahead of Craig Venter developing the first cell controlled by synthetic DNA. This dialogue showed that there is conditional public support for synthetic biology. There is great enthusiasm for the possibilities associated with this field, but also fears about controlling it and the potential for misuse; there are concerns about impacts on health and the environment. We would do well to remember this comment from a participant: “Why do they want to do it? … Is it because they will be the first person to do it? Is it because they just cant wait? What are they going to gain from it? … [T]he fact that you can take something thats natural and produce fuel, great – but what is the bad side of it? What else is it going to do?” Synthetic biology must not go the way of GM. It must retain public trust. That means understanding that fellow citizens have their worries and concerns which cannot just be dismissed.
I find this very encouraging. Ultimately, I think GM failed in Britain because the Labour ministers were – despite their many engagement foot soldiers – unwilling to engage with the issue at the political level and found it easier to roll over in the face of green campaigners. At least here we have a politician starting out on the journey of substantive political engagement.
Transparency is part of the answer. In the Coalition Agreement, we have undertaken to create a new right for the public to request government-held datasets – information which will be published in an open and standardised format for ease of use. The controversy over climate change data at the University of East Anglia has really highlighted the importance of this measure. We must, of course, have due regard to personal privacy, the opportunity to commercialise research, and national security – but, otherwise, scientific enquiry depends on practitioners being able to test and challenge both methods and results. I have already had some fascinating discussions with Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt about how we might boost data sharing.
Of course, the data at UEA is not “government-held”, it is government-funded. Hes blurred an important distinction here. Could we be going down the road of requiring recipients of research council funds to publish resulting data?
This argument for transparency and openness is actually the best protection for science. We cannot, for example, have writers facing libel charges because they offer a scientific critique of other peoples claims. This is an issue which I have raised with Ken Clarke, the Lord Chancellor, and which his department recognizes they must address.
Excellent. In the afternoon the Ministry of Justice announced plans for a bill tackling this point.
Now we get to what should be the meat of the speech…
So science is an ever stronger voice in the national conversation. For the rest of this speech, I want to focus primarily on the economic case for investment in science and research. In trying to link these grandiose arguments with economic returns, Im reminded of a rather pompous Oxford don who recommended the study of Greek literature to his Victorian undergraduates, because it “not only elevates above the vulgar herd but leads not infrequently to positions of considerable emolument.” And especially when money is tight, emolument matters. Public spending on science, just like everything else, has to stand up to rigorous economic scrutiny. Lets consider some of the most frequently used arguments.
The first relates to the benefits – often unanticipated – which accrue from blue skies research. Few scientists are as sure of their purpose as that man encountered by Gulliver, who was “eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.” The man had no doubts about impact. As he told Gulliver, “he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governors gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate”, and was desperate for additional funding “as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.”
Margaret Thatcher was more circumspect when she wrong-footed sceptical Cabinet colleagues with her defence of public spending on the Large Hadron Collider. “Yes, but isnt it interesting?” was enough to stifle their objections. And her interest in the work at CERN was rewarded by Tim Berners-Lee establishing the groundwork for the World Wide Web. Ive seen the original computer server with a note from Tim attached, instructing fellow scientists not to switch it off. Our lives have truly been revolutionised by his inventiveness.
The surprising paths which serendipity takes us down is a major reason why we need to think harder about impact. There is no perfect way to assess impact, even looking backwards at what has happened. I appreciate why scientists are wary, which is why Im announcing today a one-year delay to the implementation of the Research Excellence Framework, to figure out whether there is a method of assessing impact which is sound and which is acceptable to the academic community. This longer timescale will enable HEFCE, its devolved counterparts, and ministers to make full use of the pilot impact assessment exercise which concludes in the Autumn, and then to consider whether it can be refined.
We can also learn from elsewhere. For instance, there are some interesting developments underway in the United States, where the Star Metrics initiative is seeking to track the science dollars pumped into universities through the recovery programme and will then trace their impact on the broader economy. My department and the Research Councils are monitoring progress on this front.
To sum up Willetts views on impact – the effect of assessment on blue skies research is problematic (presumably because its impact is so hard to assess); he wants a better method of measuring impact than the current proposal from the funding councils; he thinks this might come from the research councils. Surely now universities must stop running seminars for staff on how to fulfil the impact requirements of the REF!
Criticism of the “clunky” plans for impact in the REF were one of the few solid positions that Willetts took before the election. He is standing by that now he is in post. Personally, I dont think there is a better alternative within the REF to what has been proposed, which is nonetheless God-awful, which it had to be because HEFCE had been given an impossible task by the Treasury. So I think all were seeing now is diplomatic language allowing the funding councils to withdraw gracefully from any serious attempt to base funding on REF impact assessment. Now, we even have an alternative approach based in the research councils.
We have to remember that the point of the impact agenda is to change behaviour, to get academics thinking more about how they can make an economic impact and talking more to companies. The problem with the proposed REF approach is that it – inevitably perhaps – substitutes PR fluff for substantive success. There are alternatives, and maybe the Star Metrics approach can be it.
(I was a bit thrown by the announcement that the REF was being put back a year as I have been working on that assumption for almost a year anyway.)
But let’s go back to those arguments for science. The previous government appeared to think of innovation as if it were a sausage machine. Youre supposed to put money into university-based scientific research, which leads to patents and then spinout companies that secure venture capital backing. The mature business provides tax revenues for the Government, jobs for the local area, a nice profit for the university, perhaps with Porsches in the departmental car park. It sounds very attractive and it does happen – Imperial Innovations has been a great success. But its too neat and tidy an account of scientific and commercial progress. The world does not work like this as often as you might think. And that is not our failure – it is a gap in that whole picture of innovation. Indeed it may actually have had the perverse effect of an exaggerated focus on IP and spinouts.
A welcome reminder of the risk of concentrating too much on IPR and spin outs, which – though understood as a risk by policymakers – Kieron Flanagon at Manchester says is still having perverse effects.
If Willetts is looking for a better model than sausages, he could try the “Goldfish and Lipstick” model in which: University = Goldfish bowl, Ideas and/or People = Goldfish, Company = Cat. The cats should be able to look into the goldfish bowls and scoop out the fish they want. The objective of government policy should be to make the glass as transparent as possible. And, unlike real life, the goldfish should be flirting with cats all the time, which is why universities should be encouraging them to wear lipstick.
On average the amount that universities generate from commercialising their IP (through licenses and selling stakes in spinouts) is less then 3 per cent of their total income from business and charities. Two Cambridge firms, ARM Holdings and Autonomy Corporation, are now in the FTSE100, but their route was more via mobility of researchers than via conventional spin outs. There are many other ways of harvesting benefits from research. But the benefits are real.
I like this. I think if we keep on saying “Cambridge 2, Oxford 0” often enough, we may rile Oxford into finally starting a couple of its own FTSE 100 firms.
For example, Im a firm believer in clusters – best defined as a low-risk environment for high-risk activity. I think of places like Dundee, where, according to the city council, some 350 computer game and creative industries companies are based around Abertay University. The area around Dundee is now home to about three quarters of all British jobs in computer game development. At the same time, Dundee has made a name for itself in life sciences, where first-rate research has attracted significant investment from multi-national businesses.
“Clusters”, like “rebalancing”, is a word that can have many meanings. Technology clusters are a big deal at the Treasury right now, where they seem to be forming part of the background to how it will assess the BIS CSR bid. But Willetts here is talking of regional clusters. And this isnt unimportant. What were seeing is that even though the RDAs are being abolished (and see here for comments on that), regional thinking continues.
But thats not the end of the story. There are other issues as well. Consider the spur of national pride – the pride, so to speak, of planting our flag on Everest first. There are, of course individuals – whether Olympic medallists or Nobel prize winners – whose achievements can be regarded as a vivid reflection of the health of the country that produced them. We all take pride in them. Theres certainly nothing wrong with wanting to achieve something for your country. And fame, competition and pride are human motives that we find in every walk of life. But none of this is an economic argument for being the first person to make a scientific discovery. Why does it matter economically that we should be first or that something should be discovered by a Brit? What exactly is the economic problem if the next scientific discoveries originate overseas, rather than here?
I think that the answer is that we need enough good science so we have the capacity to tackle a new problem, to react effectively to scientific breakthroughs however or wherever they may arise, and to capitalise on those breakthroughs via research programmes and business initiatives of our own. Some 95 per cent of scientific research is conducted outside the UK. We need to be able to apply it here – and, in advanced scientific fields, it is often necessary to conduct leading-edge research in order to understand, assimilate and exploit the leading-edge research of others. It is this absorptive capacity which is crucial. Indeed, Griffiths, Redding and Van Reenen have shown that higher domestic business R&D spend also leads to greater productivity being generated at home from foreign R&D spend as well. And there are powerful feedback mechanisms on top of this – foreign companies cite the quality of the public research base as one of the main reasons for locating their own internationally mobile R&D here.
The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott coined in the 1940s the influential term “good-enough mother”, a mother who doesnt need to be perfect but just good enough to allow the baby and then child to develop in a healthy way. Willetts seems here to be articulating the idea of “good-enough science”, science that doesnt have to win Nobel prizes but which is good enough to allow economic growth to happen. If taken seriously, this would be quite a departure. It could lead to support for cutting edge science, but only so long as that is performing a useful function, which I think is probably a question that could be periodically reviewed. Counterposed to this is his support for the Abertay computer games example, which required no huge investment of government research funding. All this is very much not the thinking of the Royal Society I would guess. And I think were going to hear a lot more about absorptive capcity.
Now, this is, of course, something that we do already – yet the widespread notion is quite different; that the British invent and then fail to execute. On the contrary, the first model for computer tomography arose in South Africa, but the first CT scanner was made here in the UK. The ozone layer was discovered by French physicists, but UK scientists devised a way of measuring it, while members of the British Antarctic survey found a big hole in it.
More weird examples of physics-technology-that-is-useful-only-to-scientists. Has he actually talked to any medics yet?
Government backing for research does make economic sense. I was particularly interested to read the recent Imperial College Discussion Paper by Jonathan Haskel and Gavin Wallis, “Public support for Innovation, Intangible investment and Productivity Growth in the UK Market Sector”. It shows particularly strong spillover benefits from R&D spend on research councils. It shows a positive return from other forms of R&D too, but the spillover benefits seem to be greatest from the research councils. This is interesting evidence that research council spend is doing the job it should be doing – generating wider benefits across the economy as a whole. And the fact that one of the authors is a Treasury official only adds to its value!
The Haskel & Wallis paper (here)is being cited by research councils in their submissions to BIS. It is co-authored by someone at the Treasury. Now it gets cited by Willetts. It is clearly having an impact and so its abstract is worth repeating in full:
Pressure on public finances has increased scrutiny of public support for innovation. We examine two particular issues. First, there have been many recent calls for the (relatively new) UK R&D subsidy to be extended to other “research” activities, such as software. Second, argument still rages about the
efficacy of direct public spending on R&D via spending on academic research councils, universities, and government undertaken work on civil and military R&D. To evaluate these questions we use data on market sector productivity, R&D and non-R&D intangible assets, and public sector R&D
spending. We look for evidence of market sector spillovers from intangible investment and from public R&D. We find (a) no evidence of spillover effects from intangible investment at the market sector level, including from R&D, (b) strong evidence of market sector spillovers from public R&D
spend on research councils, and (c) no evidence of market sector spillovers from public spending on civil or defence R&D. Our findings tentatively suggest that for maximum market sector productivity impact government innovation policy should focus on direct spending on research councils.
So by the time you get to the end of the abstract it is clear that this paper is not really, as Willetts has presented it, an argument in favour of spending more on the research councils. It is an argument in favour of the research councils at the expense of mechansims such as the Technlogy Strategy Board that operate at the “market sector” level. [See Research Fortnight, 30 June 2010 for why this is ominous]. We will be looking at this paper in more detail in due course.
These arguments about clusters, about absorptive capacity and the importance of basic research have already led me to a number of conclusions about the role of government in supporting science and innovation. I cant talk about levels of investment – that must await the CSR – but I do want to share my thinking on policy direction.
First, it makes sense for government to back shared facilities – research platforms if you like – which private companies could not develop on their own. So Im delighted that a state-of-the-art laboratory is opening today at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. The new £26million lab is next to the Diamond Light Source, the ISIS neutron source and the Central Laser Facility. It will allow researchers to work side-by-side with beam line experts in fields ranging from drug development to novel materials. (They might even find that the most important room on the site is the coffee bar, as at the Hauser forum in Cambridge.) To date, experimentation at Diamond alone has helped firms like Rolls Royce to apply synchrotron techniques for aerospace and energy applications; Pfizerand GlaxoSmithKlineon drug discoveryand development; Johnson Matthey on improved emissions control catalysts. This is how publicly backed R&D boosts economic performance – one OECD study found that a 1 per cent increase in public R&D increased overall productivity by 0.17 per cent.
Im not sure if this is really a policy development, or just a way of basking in Harwell glow (which normally I wouldnt recommend). The analysis of procurement in the coming paras seems more solid, but I cant see what hes saying the government will actually do here.
Im similarly keen on pursuing further programmes along the lines of Skynet, the UKs single biggest space project system and the provider of secure satellite telecommunications for Britains armed forces. With Skynet, the Ministry of Defence purchased a service, and requests further capability as necessary, but does not own the hardware. Instead, Astrium can sell spare bandwidth to other government departments and friendly states, thereby reducing MoD costs. Skynet is an example of smart public sector procurement. Instead of buying a satellite, the MoD bought a service and created a commercial opportunity at the same time. Spending about £220 billion pounds annually, its vital that the public sector uses that purchasing power effectively. There is a lot more that we can do here both to back SMEs and to back innovation. A purchasing contract can be as effective a way to get money to an innovative small business as a grant or a capital investment: this is particularly important at times when banks are so reluctant to lend.
The economist Daron Acemoglu has shown how demand is sometimes aggregated or mediated through Government, as with defence or (in the UK) healthcare. In these cases the procurement decisions of Government can have important intended or unintended consequences for innovation. ARM Holdings, whom I mentioned earlier, started life as a collaboration between Apple and Acorn, the makers of the BBC micro computer. A BBC contract was crucial in its expansion to become producer of the worlds most widely-used 32-bit microprocessor family. We must get better at stimulating businesses through this route so that other small firms can be helped on the road to similar success.
So far I have identified publicly funded research facilities and better public procurement. A third option worth exploring is public competitions for new technologies. Many of you will recall the stir caused by John McCain during the 2008 US presidential race, when he proposed a $300 million prize for battery technology to bring plug-in hybrids & fully electric automobiles into commercial use. It was criticised at the time in the New Scientist and elsewhere because it did not reflect the lessons that had been learnt on the best design of such prizes. Economic analysis can teach us a lot here. His idea has impressive antecedents in this country. As we know from Dava Sobels bestseller Longitude, inventors earned more than £100,000 through terms set out in the Longitude Act of 1714, including £14,000 to John Harrison for his work on chronometers over the course of three decades.
In the early twentieth century, teams competing in the Schneider Trophy for seaplane development sometimes received money from the government, as well as RAF pilots on loan. Advances in aerodynamics and low-drag, liquid-cooled engines then contributed to the effectiveness of the Spitfire. A US firm, InnoCentive, runs what has been called an eBay for innovators in which companies set out problems which their network of 200,000 registered experts solve for a fee. One appraisal showed a third of problems which originators could not solve were solved by an outside expert who might be from a different discipline. And separately, the charity, the X Prize Foundation, identifies bigger challenges for which it sets a prize: it has driven innovation in sub-orbital space flight – including with our very own Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. These sorts of networks are fundamental to a nation’s innovative capacity and depend on a wide range of expertise. These prizes, if designed right, can be effective drivers of innovation. And it need not be Government which sets the prize or the challenge – it can happen in marketplaces on the web too.
Yes, it would be good to see some clever prizes. I have invented the Cullerne Bown Prize. This is a tenner and immortality to anyone who can come up with a good science prize for the UK!
The challenge we face is to make best use of our science base. Especially in a time of austerity, we inevitably think of the way it can contribute to economic growth. I strongly believe that contribution may come best if we encourage openness and innovation, not if we try to micromanage our universities, direct researchers or count patents. If we get the environment right, the evidence is overwhelmingly that scientific research can contribute to economic growth. A series of excellent recent reports have not just shown this but gone further and identified policy options for doing better in the future. I think of the report from the Council for Science and Technology, A Vision for UK Research; The Royal Society report, The Scientific Century; Herman Hauser’s report on technology innovation centres; Nesta’s recent work and, of course, James Dyson’s very valuable report for my party, Ingenious Britain. There is lot of overlap between them and they provide the intellectual foundations on which we can set to work on the task of rebalancing our economy. The way forward lies in exploiting an evidently outstanding research capability with clear potential, under the right conditions, to drive sustainable economic growth.
Possibly the second most important point is almost smuggled in at the end. The Maxwell Centres bandwagon is now well and truly rolling. But, as he hints, what emerges may not be what Hauser or Dyson put in. I get the impression that whats going on is a bit like re-engineering a plane into a helicopter, while in flight. What will the medics make of this physicists plot? What about all our existing centres? Is this going to be just a cunning ruse to shift funding from basic to applied work? Big questions remain.
At which point, Ive no doubt tested your patience enough, if not your absorptive capacity.
Thanks to the Science Media Centre and the Royal Institution for hosting me today. I now welcome your questions and comments.
The Rt Hon David Willetts MP
Minister for Universities and Science
09.07.10
**
Comments welcome. Here are some links to others I know who have commented on the speech (let me know and Ill add more):
Brian Owens from Research Fortnight
Richard Jones, Sheffield PVC
Hannnah Devlin, the Times (pay — but still in £1 for 30 days trial period)
Stephen Curry, structural biologist
Roger Highfield, New Scientist
Me in my later Research Fortnight column (subscribers only)