The government has just published its Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth, promising some technological steps designed to help rebalance the UK economy. The gilt-edged opportunity to do this, however, rather than just talk about it will fall into the coalition's laps next year.
The forthcoming roll-out of fourth generation (4G) mobile telephony – an auction of airwaves to the phone operators – will mean a multibillion pound windfall for the government. And if Messrs Cameron and Osborne are serious about an economy built on discovery and invention, rather than just debt and finance, that windfall should be reinvested in British science and engineering.
The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, was on record this week discussing Labour's decision to use the proceeds from the 3G auction in 2000 to help pay down the national debt, recalling it as a sensible decision which was opposed at the time by the Tories. No doubt there will be calls on George Osborne to use the proceeds in a similar way this time – but while a sum of around £3bn would have a negligible direct impact on the UK's debt, it could be an economic game-changer if invested in science and engineering. We need to start having that debate now.
At a time of economic turmoil and pessimism, it's easy to forget that the UK still is a world leader when it comes to scientific discovery. We beat almost every other nation hands-down, with only the US having a better record on some measures. This strength should be used as the bedrock of our economic recovery.
The evidence that science and engineering can provide the raw materials for innovative business is there in spades. To pick just one example, a recent report for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport revealed that the digital communications industry contributes over £50bn to the economy every year, and that's even before you consider the social benefits of a better connected world.
That £50bn didn't come out of nowhere. Digital communications, like so many other sectors, has its roots in blue skies scientific research and its subsequent engineering applications. Although it's now a stretch to imagine a world without telecommunications, the technology began life as work which must have seemed utterly esoteric at the time.
It was 19th-century Scottish scientist James Clerk-Maxwell who first predicted the existence of radio, almost as a byproduct of his equations showing that light, electricity, and magnetism were all part of the same underlying phenomenon – electromagnetism. Those equations were explored by people like Hertz, Bose, and Nikola Tesla, who demonstrated that invisible radio waves could be used to send and receive information.
But it was the Italian entrepreneur, Guglielmo Marconi, who eventually commercialised the technology. The Marconi Company opened the world's first radio factory here in England, and performed the first transatlantic radio broadcast. Marconi's innovations helped the development of television, radar, and ultimately mobile telephony.
The reason we still see shrinking phone costs and equipment today, coupled with increasing speeds and capacities, is because scientists and engineers are still innovating. It's why we're now phasing in digital TV at the expense of analogue – the switch frees up parts of the radio spectrum which the big mobile phone companies will bid for in order to use with the new, faster, 4G mobile standard. The technology promises broadband-like speeds, delivered wirelessly for smartphones.
Advances like telecommunications – or indeed other British breakthroughs, such as the world wide web or the discovery of the structure of DNA – open the door to a whole new set of technologies. As a nation, the UK is uniquely placed to develop and produce their 21st-century counterparts, but we need unequivocal political support to make that happen. Germany auctioned off its 4G spectrum this year, raising €4bn – if a similar sum was invested in UK science and engineering, it could kick-start our knowledge economy.
This isn't a risky strategy. Again, Germany, the nation the entire eurozone is now counting on, last year decided to ramp up investment in research and education even as it was making overall reductions in public spending because it recognised the economic importance of doing so. The UK's own Technology Strategy Board helps the commercialisation of everything from low-carbon energy to more efficient ways of producing drugs, and already generates a return nearly £7 for every £1 invested from the public purse – but it receives just £300m of funding per year.
Comments
8 December 2011 12:01PM
Excellent idea- but we'll probably just spend it all to cover our olympic debts- sport is edifying for the nation.
8 December 2011 12:02PM
I agree with you but will Cameron and Osborne do what is necessary when they don't really understand technology and engineering and think that it means factories and trades unions. Also the City basically has the government and exchequer by the short and curlies and what little money is available they want first sniff at.
8 December 2011 12:05PM
No No No, lets use it to make the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics better. Maybe more fireworks, some circus performers, may pay an artist to make a lifesize model of big ben.
Some shit like that?
8 December 2011 12:05PM
Damn you Doc Molotov
8 December 2011 12:09PM
Hmm so by previous form Osborne will sell the lot to Richard Branson for €2m, €770m of which will be an accounting trick.
Take of advice fees and general incompetence, and that will leave British science owing Richard Branson about GBP 6,000.
Do you really want that burden?
8 December 2011 12:09PM
I think the Tories have a history of not understanding the value of the theoretical science (even though Thatcher was supposedly a Chemist). It is the short term profit mentality. Definately think we should invest in science and particularly engineering. Given the history and talent we have we should be able to match Germany.
8 December 2011 12:11PM
Britain is indeed a world leader in science and "high tech" engineering - notwithstanding the fact that government "help" is so lacking in these areas.
What you fail to understand, though, is that it is because the government does not "help" in these areas, that Britons are so successful.
Everything a British government touches turns to dust - so I'm afraid that the last thing that those monies should be used for is to tarnish what is an existing British success story.
8 December 2011 12:15PM
Based on precedent, I'm going to predict it's either used for digging the HS2 tunnel, or covering 2 days of the cost of invading Iran.
8 December 2011 12:22PM
Just like everything else that has been invented by the UK - other countries have latched on, invested heavily and we end up bottom of the pile.
turboJet Engine,
TV
Submarines (little help from a dutchman)
ejector seat (sort of)
plastic surgery procedures (burns victims WW2 pilots)
disc brakes
cats eyes
electric motor
gas masks
penicilin
We have had some of the best things ever - but it seems once invented its forgotten about with a sort of - yep nice one Neville now move on a chum.
We should be world leaders in a lot of things but its sold of. Car industry - Rolls Royce was only balied out because of American pressure as it was building merlin jet engines! Otherwise it was a case of tough titty!!!
I wish we werent so short sighted sometimes.
8 December 2011 12:22PM
She did a compressed course in WW2 (it kept you out of the armed forces) and was supposed to have been part of the team that developed Mr. Whippy by adding air to ice-cream, thus getting the proles to pay for air. You wouldn't have made it up...but it exactly summarises the Conservative approach to science, which is:
1. Confuse it with engineering (mind you the G does this a lot)
2. Expect it to turn an instant profit
3. Skimp
The author misses the most egregious example: the UK conceived and developed the stored program computer and promptly pissed away their lead after WW2, leaving things to the Americans. The British attempt to design a military computer (the Ferranti F100/L) was done on an impossibly small shoestring, so it was a flop. (In fact that was about how fast it felt - 0.000001 megaflops). Politicians underinvest and underinvest and then complain we cannot compete with the Americans, Germans and Chinese who water promising ideas with floods of money.
8 December 2011 12:22PM
From the Telegraph:
So in fact you've managed to find a position no one agrees with (except perhaps Fox News).
Well done - have a star for extra good trolling.
8 December 2011 12:27PM
The Merlin was a (roughly 24 litre) V-12 piston engine used in the Spitfire during WW2 and thereafter used in some amusing racing tractors and RR car chassis. In no shape or form was it a jet engine. (When I started my engineering career there were still a few guys around who had worked on the Merlin...they enver got the recognition they deserved.)
Rolls-Royce has been consistently undervalued by the City because they cannot get their heads around a company which, if it stopped selling engines tomorrow, would still be around in 50 years time servicing them. It's like a mayfly trying to grasp the point of an elephant.
8 December 2011 12:29PM
it's just not going to happen though, is it. Some token sum will be announced, with great fanfare, while the bulk of the money will go in the Tory Chancellor's 'war chest' for the next election: a few give-aways there to curry favour with voters.
8 December 2011 12:31PM
Much of our wartime and post war R&D was handed over to the Americans Lock Sock and Barrel as part of our Lease Lend agreement. I don't know if and when that ever stopped but it seems we were still doing so as late as the 1960s. They certainly walked away with a complete Colossus II plus a lot of other technology developed during the war years.
8 December 2011 12:32PM
And also based on precedent, the government will probably claim that it funded both, and several other things besides.
8 December 2011 12:34PM
Yet this condem government wants to remove Design and Technology from the school curriculum in favour of ancient languages and history.
You really couldnt make it up.
8 December 2011 12:39PM
What on earth are you on about? I'm a bit confused by your use of help in inverted commas. In any case, the EPSRC -- whose funds come directly from the government -- pumps in more than £800 million a year into engineering and physical sciences research.
8 December 2011 12:41PM
Investment in British science and technology?
Are you sure?
The BNP has been calling for this for years. Do you really want something that the BNP wants?
How about instead calling for investment in foreign students, so that they can take the skills learnt here back to their home countries?
Oh hang on, that's already happening....
8 December 2011 12:43PM
The floods of money going into technology in the US does not come from the federal government or 'politicians'. They continue to pour money into the traditional state areas of construction, military, agriculture and so on.
The US has a huge and vibrant venture capital system that makes large sums of money available to entrepreneurs. Britain does not. If you've invented something and want to set up a company to make it, you're better of moving to the US to do so.
No, I'm pretty sure that offering incentives to cash-rich venture capital companies isn't going to be popular with guardian readers. May cut capital gains tax to encourage people to invest in companies? Perhaps relax the regulations around angel investment to get more money that way? Maybe promoting stronger links between large manufacturing companies and universities?
These are all things that might be effective, but are unarguably 'capitalist' in nature. How exactly should the government invest in technology? No point giving to academics - our academics do very well, but we can't cash in on their ideas, because we are not entrepreneurial enough. We could set up a government run VC fund dedicated to technology, but the idea of civil servants picking which startups to invest in is laughable.
So, I'd love to know how this money will be invested. Give it all to BT to install rural broadband? That's just a pointless windfall for BT shareholders (and arguably anti-competitive).
8 December 2011 12:45PM
I'm no fan of Thatcher but this seems to be untrue - she did a 4 year chemistry degree at Oxford from 1943-1947 and then worked as a research chemist for 3 years before turning to politics.
8 December 2011 12:52PM
As mentioned above Thatcher did a compressed wartime course in chemistry and came out of it with a "third".
I remember sycophants in the Royal Society of Chemistry planning to giver her an honorary CChem and Fellowship in the 1980s. It came to nothing as it became clear that a large slice of the membership would have resigned in protest / disgust as apart from killing the universities her level of qualification in chemistry was well below what was required even for the GRSC, two levels below what they planned to give her.
Our problem is that hardly any politicians have any experience of anything outside of politics or law, and the few who do behave as if they were lobotomised on entry to the house. We need to fix it somehow, but quite how is a mystery to me at least.
8 December 2011 12:54PM
It's valued at 13.6bn by the market. The idea that analysts and investors don't understand the value of a company's support contracts is implausible, although I'm not saying it isn't currently undervalued. Some very new business models are misunderstood for a while by the markets, and that can be a problem. I don't see much evidence that what Rolls-Royce is doing is so radical that the markets don't understand it.
Anyway, Rolls-Royce is a success story, in general. How should the government spend 4bn to create more companies like it?
8 December 2011 1:01PM
You have no idea what you are talking about. She got a second class honours degree. Fuck me CiF is a waste of space. And the thing about the ice cream is also a lie. It's just fiction, urban myth, whatever. Made up stuff on the internet. Jesus.
8 December 2011 1:10PM
What happened to the Billions raised from the Auction of the 3G network?
This money'll just vanish with it into the same black hole...
It went to servcie our national debts, Brown guffawed at the time while leaving no account for it in any coffers...
8 December 2011 1:10PM
Linkhttp://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XRpdT3gc9KYC&pg=PA5&dq=Margaret+Thatcher+ice&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Margaret%20Thatcher%20ice&f=false
and the chem soc didnt really like the honorary award.
also - she did work on emulsifiers for ice cream.
so the guy(s) youre tearing to pieces got it right with the exception of the grade she received. you really should chill out.
CiF is just full of shit though eh?
8 December 2011 1:11PM
my bad....mucked the link up
guardian - edit function?
8 December 2011 1:12PM
One of the problems we have is that politicians (of all shades) see the big money men as wealth creators and forget that new ideas don't come from the top but from the bottom, usually by someone on the shop floor or in their own garage. Education is the key as is practical training in skills and technology. The government would do well to encourage some of the new "universities" to return to being technical colleges that do both theory and practice.
The main problem with our politicians is that too many of them have had what is referred to a a classical education, where they learn all the subjects but not there use in everyday life. They understand Euclid and Pythagoras but not the practical implications of the maths.
8 December 2011 1:13PM
On what data are you relying?
I ask because Wikipedia refers to her doing a "4 year bachelor of science degree" at Oxford. I think they are confused. At Oxford in the 1940s (and if I am wrong please will someone correct me on this) all first degrees were BA. The Bachelor of Science was the first postgraduate degree in science. As far as I know my observation about the compressed degrees in WW2 was correct, but again I await correction. I didn't know she had done a postgraduate qualification.
I'm afraid I was relying on a personal communication from a now deceased Labour politician, and so I may well be wrong in fact. If so I am sure the moderators will delete the potentially libellous post.
8 December 2011 1:13PM
Black Holes have been renamed Banks!
8 December 2011 1:17PM
Since under EU law it is illegal for a government to subsidise its industries, and it is illegal to close government procurement contracts to foreign bidders, it is hard to subsidise these firms directly and legally.
Best way is to either give them a tax holiday, or lend them the money.
The tax holiday would have to be carefully done. Since R&D is already tax deductable it would incentivise a drop in R&D during the holdiday and increased payment to equity holders (debt payments are of course pre-tax).
Best way then it seems is an low interest 20yr loan.
Alternatively we could house more immigrants in central london, to maintain a diverse community.
I prefer the former.
8 December 2011 1:18PM
drop in the ocean compared to 17 years of housing benefit alone.
8 December 2011 1:27PM
You are correct, which is why I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that she had done a postgraduate course; but I then realised that in 1945-7 there would have been few available candidates as most soldiers had not been demobilised.
However, the thing about the ice cream is not "just fiction, urban myth, whatever". Indeed, before the Guardian deletes my post, let me point out that they themselves printed an article which read in part
on 28th May this year.
I'm going to break something to you: the Internet is very unreliable on stuff more than about 10 years old, and a very poor source of information on anything over 20. Because you can't find something doesn't mean it isn't true.
Indeed on Margaret Thatcher's own website the issue is fudged thus:
While we on the subject I cannot resist adding a snarky remark from a biochemist of my acquaintance:
"Margaret Thatcher did a paper on the structure of gramicidin. It was a substance that looked very promising as an antibiotic and it killed all kinds of bacteria in low doses. Unfortunately, in the same doses it killed the patients. You could say it was appropriate".
8 December 2011 1:28PM
Thanks for the info on Thatcher. If you think of all the actual products (never mind the theoretical advances) that were developed and then either given away or not exploited it is heart breaking:
Jet engine
Radar
TSR2
Rocket program
Stored program computer
etc
As for the last one, the man who built it, Tommy Flowers, should be a national hero. He got a community centre named after him, which has since been shut. Shameful.
8 December 2011 1:29PM
I have always found the lack of skills argument an excuse used by politicians. The US and UK have some of the best universities and research in the world yet people in both countries complain about lack of skills. If the million young people unemployed had PHDs in sciences they still wouldn't have jobs to go into.
The knowledge economy is just a dream used to distract us from the short term problems that really need solving.
8 December 2011 1:40PM
What are you saying that seventeen years of Housing Benefit has cost the country somewhere in the region of one trillion pounds? I don't think so.
8 December 2011 1:41PM
Well why do we need engineers anymore - all production has been moved more or less abroad, we have to shut down factories and give contracts to Europe and no one really buys "british" anymore.
And who is to blame? Thatcher started it, blair carried it on and now Cammie is nailing the last nail into the coffin.
8 December 2011 1:42PM
National Institute of Health?
Military R&D budget?
A Battelle paper by Martin Grueber says
I make that over $110 billion already. And note that is R&D, NOT actual spending on medicine or the military.
Still, don't let mere facts get in the way of your neoliberal agenda.
8 December 2011 1:43PM
What's 4G?
No, I agree, I would like the UK to be commercially stronger in the world in engineering and science, instead of (or rather as well as) city finance. Well said.
8 December 2011 1:44PM
Sad indeed but they have rebuilt his Colossus machine and it's now on permanent display at Bletchley Park.
8 December 2011 1:48PM
Yes I forgot that, that is a great monument to the man (and Turing and the others involved). Still for building such a pivotal piece of technology, not least one that saved so many lives, it doesn't seem enough.
8 December 2011 1:48PM
Ha ha ha. You really think Osborne gives a fuck about R&D etc. It will be used to pay off some debt and or wasted on some "scheme" it will not be used to boost economic growth.
8 December 2011 1:53PM
Says someone with no knowledge whatever of the history of science.
All the great British scientists until recently were extremely wealthy men who could afford to do the expensive work.
8 December 2011 1:54PM
3G was hardly a big success so why should we expect better from 4G?
8 December 2011 2:03PM
Well, its not going to be poular with me because it will just be used as a way to make even more money from activities that are not "Venture."
The money will be used to speculate in Wine or Whisky or some other non productive scheme like saving Readers Digest, which was done by that great 'Venture' capitalist Jon Moulton.
The government has just 'given' £50m to our Nobel prize winning nanotchnologists at Manchester University.
A classic case of underinvestment.
It isn't al all laughabble if those civil servants are working scientists of good reputation. There's plenty to choose from.
8 December 2011 2:04PM
Don't forget all the technology which ultimately allowed the Americans to break the sound barrier before us.
8 December 2011 2:05PM
Foreign students pay huge sums of monies for that knowledge/skill/training. The government don't subsidise foreign students. And if after their qualification they choose to go home, good on them; it's their choice. If they find a job here, then it's 'Oh my god, johnny foreigners are taking our jobs!'
You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
8 December 2011 2:07PM
...not to mention the way that Turing was treated. He should have been a national hero as well, not persecuted for being homosexual.
8 December 2011 2:11PM
Making things and engineering them are two very different things.
8 December 2011 2:12PM
Didn't she invent Mr Whippy.
8 December 2011 2:16PM
Err.. what? You sure about that?