---

Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD): The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) has given us a real insight into his constituency, and the idea that lots of people are running away from those schools with whiteboards under their arms is a fantastic one to envisage.

Mr. Walker: It is a very serious problem. My children's school has been hit twice in three weeks. Almost a dozen schools in my constituency have been raided repeatedly and their IT equipment has been taken, and it does the hon. Gentleman no service to make light of that in the debate.

Mr. Willis: I feel utterly chastised, and I apologise.

I left the debate earlier this evening to attend a reception with the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) and Lord Crathorne. We are working with a group of young people who are blind. Most of them are also deaf, and many of them also have physical impairments. Returning to Budget debates should make us recognise the fact that the reality of
 
28 Mar 2006 : Column 771
 
what we are debating is an attempt to make people's lives better in our communities, wherever they are. I pay tribute to the Economic Secretary, who is sitting next to the Chief Secretary, for the support that he gave to Henshaw's college when he was a Minister in the Department for Education and Skills. I thank him for delivering on a promise that the Government made to put about £2 million into that project, and I do so with great sincerity.

I should like to concentrate my brief remarks on science. This was a Budget for science. Whatever we might think of other bits of the Budget, science came out of it very well indeed. The additional supply of science teachers, the offering of pure sciences to more young people, new support for carbon capture and storage, replacing the research assessment exercise system and extending R and D tax credits were all things that I support, and my Committee—the Science and Technology Committee—was very supportive of those things, too.

This was a somewhat unusual Budget. I, for one, was surprised by the extent of the changes in the Budget, and the associated "Science and innovation investment framework 2004–2014: next steps" reads more like a science White Paper than a Budget document. I do not think that I was the only person who was surprised by the announcements. They came as news, for instance, to organisations that will be affected by them. It appears that the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, the Medical Research Council and even some parts of the Office of Science and Technology were informed of the changes announced in the Budget only the day before. It seems that the Chancellor cannot wait to put his plans for science and technology into action and that he has even taken responsibility for reorganising the research councils. So if the Chancellor is now running science policy, I wonder what the Minister for Science and Innovation and the Office of Science and Technology have left to do.

However, the real issue behind some of the changes announced in the Budget is: who in the Government is monitoring the UK's science capacity, and where and how? In the past couple of weeks, we have been debating the closure of the chemistry department at the university of Sussex and the loss in the past two years of four major chemistry departments, which produced the very chemistry graduates who will be among the 3,000 such teachers in our schools in a few years' time. I wonder who is monitoring the situation. It certainly is not the Higher Education Funding Council, which told my Committee last night that it had absolutely no plans to intervene in what is clearly a dire situation.

We recognise the huge investment that has been made in science—the £10 billion provided in this comprehensive spending review is massive additional funding—but although the money is going in, there remains a Luddite approach to many of our world-class science facilities. The Silsoe research institute, which has world-class expertise in agricultural engineering, and the Hannah research institute, which deals with nutrition, will close this Friday. Four Centre for Ecology and Hydrology institutions will close next year, at a time when environmental science should be at the heart of our agenda, instead of being trimmed at the margins. In the past 10 years, one in three science posts in publicly funded institutions have gone. I hope that the
 
28 Mar 2006 : Column 772
 
Minister will explain in his wind-up who is doing the planning for science. Who is pulling it all together and looking at a strategic science base for the UK?

I do not dispute the right of research councils to say that we do not need a particular element of science in this or that institute; nor do I question the fact that at times institutes will have to close. What I do question is the complete lack of a science plan outlining the capacity that we need in the coming years.

The replacement of the RAE system was a welcome announcement. It was handled well and I compliment the Government not only on getting rid, eventually, of the RAE system, but on introducing the new metric system and running the two systems side by side. However, what our universities do not want—I hope that the Minister will take this point on board—is to be running a full RAE system in 2008 and a full new metric system at the same time. Frankly, that would simply undermine much of what has to be done.

The really interesting announcement in the Budget was the reorganisation of research institutes. We Liberal Democrats and my Committee are pleased that the wealth of information in the NHS database will be used for research purposes, but where did the announcement on combining the Medical Research Council and the NHS database come from? Who will lead the organisation? Will it be Sir Colin Blakemore, or somebody brought in through open competition? What resources will the organisation have? The Chancellor mentioned a figure of approximately £1 billion, but the amount spent on the MRC and on the NHS database combined comes to £1.3 billion. So does this constitute a cut in medical research funding? It would be interesting to have an answer to that.

Finally, will the Minister say what is happening with the restructuring of this country's eight research councils? It seems that the Treasury is doing something that nobody else knows about. It is proposing that the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council surrender its grant-giving duties to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and that it then merge its facilities with the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils, creating a new "large facilities council". Whatever the proposal's merits—I accept that there are some—surely Research Councils UK should be doing such planning, not the Chancellor sat in the Treasury. Perhaps the Minister can reassure us on this issue.

Overall, however, this is a Budget for science that is to be welcomed, and it certainly will be appreciated in the science community.

9.4 pm

Mrs. Iris Robinson (Strangford) (DUP): I apologise for not being in the Chamber for the whole debate, Madam Deputy Speaker; as you know, the Northern Ireland Grand Committee met this afternoon at 4.30.

In the limited time available, it is difficult to highlight the most important aspects of the speech I had prepared. Many thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost in my constituency, but I want to flag up the serious situation of the multimillion pound fishing industry.

Northern Ireland fishermen have been told that they will receive no moneys for the 11-week closure of fishing in the Irish sea, pursuant to the cod recovery scheme,
 
28 Mar 2006 : Column 773
 
which is now in its seventh year and runs from mid-February until the end of April. As the House will appreciate, that announcement caused much alarm to fishermen, processors and their families and to local communities that rely on the fishing industry. Council regulation (EC) No. 2792/1999 governs the payment of compensation, and aid was paid under it in 2004 and 2005.

This year, we pressed for the renewal of aid to fishermen in Northern Ireland, and on 31 January 2006 my colleague Jim Allister, MEP, received from the Minister with responsibility for agriculture and rural development a letter indicating that payments beyond two years were prohibited by EU regulation. My colleague disputed that and invited Commissioner Borg to give the Commission's view about the regulation. On 8 March 2006, Dr. Borg wrote to our MEP saying that although the regulation capped compensation at a cumulative total of 12 months, in Northern Ireland payments had been made only for five months so seven months' compensation was still payable by the national Government, and could be spread over several years. Will the Government consider the modest request that £800,000 be allocated to allow suffering Northern Ireland fishermen to survive?

The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) referred to the home computer initiative. I received a letter from a constituent, Philip Norton of Ballygowan, who said:

"By scrapping the Home Computing Initiative—a tax incentive introduced in 1999 and further clarified and enhanced in 2003 to enable greater take-up of PCs in the home—the Chancellor has removed one of the most popular and successful initiatives he has created in his time in power, and one that is still running in several countries throughout Europe."

He pointed out that only 10 days were left to sort out the matter, and he would appreciate it if the decision could be reconsidered and, if possible, reversed, as it will have a huge impact throughout the United Kingdom.

I welcome the planned reduction in the number of health trusts and boards in Northern Ireland under the public administration review. I hope that will result in the release of moneys that can be ploughed into front-line services. I have some real concerns about whether the changes can be rolled out without too much upheaval for staff and patients, but time alone will tell.

For a change, I want to record my delight about recent announcements about additional moneys for Herceptin for women suffering from breast cancer and the additional £2 million for beta interferon for multiple sclerosis sufferers, to end the postcode lottery among the Province's health boards. The latest announcement about anti-TNF drugs is a life-saving decision for many sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis, which is a crippling disease. We need ring-fenced funding for those drugs, so that no one who needs them loses out in future. In the past, people have been denied them simply because of where they happened to live.

With nine other MPs from across the UK, I had the pleasure of participating in a meeting with rheumatoid arthritis sufferers to help to compile a book highlighting their experiences with and without anti-TNF drugs. I met a young woman, Hazel Mark, who started showing symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 11. She
 
28 Mar 2006 : Column 774
 
is now in her late 20s or early 30s and has been on    Remicade for approximately one year. The transformation in her life has been miraculous. The things that we all take for granted, such as opening cans, lifting a baby and just being able to get out of bed, are now possible for Hazel. On behalf of people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, I thank Ministers for the welcome news about anti-TNF drugs.

I also want to place on record my thanks for the additional £14.6 million, which the Minister for social development in Northern Ireland has made available for community funding. I had a meeting with him yesterday in my constituency. The news is welcome to the various women's groups throughout Northern Ireland, which will now be in a position, at last, to try to draw down that much-needed funding. The women's centres have been the sticking plaster of local communities throughout the years of the troubles. They do an amazing job in relation to education, preparing women to go back into the workplace, providing crèche facilities and so on. I pay particular tribute to the Ballybeen women's centre, which has done such sterling work over 20-odd years. I am glad that it will not have to go cap in hand looking for funding from various sources, but can avail itself of that much needed money to secure the work that it does in my constituency and throughout the Province.

9.11 pm

---