Young people need to shape the future knowledge economy
3rd November 2006
The Prime Minister has placed science at the heart of the country’s economic future. In one of a series of lectures titled ‘Our Nation’s Future’, he predicted science would be as important to the UK’s economy as stability.
Tony Blair told an audience in Oxford that more young people needed to be inspired to follow a scientific career. “We have to be a magnet for scientific endeavor,” he said, “attracting the best people, turning the knowledge into commercial enterprise, forming the collaborations and partnerships here, in Europe and across the world that keep us right at the new frontiers science is perpetually staking out.”
Forget politics, he said, “if, as an idealistic young person, you wanted to change the world, then become a scientist.”
He explained that every area of policy had a scientific element and sciences influenced every aspect of people’s daily lives.
Professor Colin Blakemore, the Medical Research Council Chief Executive, warmly welcomed the speech: ‘‘Tony Blair is so right to urge young people to seize the chance of a career in science. It offers a lifetime of challenge and discovery - more opportunity to follow your own interests and to develop your own talents than any other career I can imagine.”
Tony Blair also described the UK’s history of innovative discoveries but warned against complacency and went on to warn that international competition was “intense and getting more so”. The research capacity of China, South Korea and India was growing at a tremendous rate, he said, for example India now produced 350,000 engineers a year. To create a knowledge economy the UK must be able to compete internationally not using wages but with our scientists’ intelligence and creativity.
Mr Blair had this message for scientists: “you need to think intellectually, but also commercially. There is still a significant cultural difference between the UK and the US. In the US, it is common for scientists to design a research programme specifically to answer the questions posed by businesses. In the UK that connection is usually made later in the process”.
Professor Blakemore endorsed the Prime Minister’s words, saying science offered a “chance to benefit other people”. He added “The endeavours of medical researchers in this country have given longer, healthier lives to people in Britain and all over the world, and have made an incalculable contribution to the UK economy. If Britain is to maintain its position as a global leader in research, which will be essential for our future success, we need young people to catch the bug of science.’’
The Prime Minister also explained that scientists would need more support from the public: “We need scientists willing and able to explain, to reason, to give the scientific facts not by arrogant assertion but by patience and also accurately reflecting where science is fact and where it is still conjecture. Britain as a whole must become a scientifically literate society. This is not simply to grow the next generation of scientists but also to condition all of us to a reasoned understanding of what science can do for us; to dispel the myths; calm the scares; let us make our moral judgments, at least partially, on the facts.”
Professor Chris Higgins, Director of the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre said: ‘We all need to understand the excitement of science, discovering new things and making use of that knowledge to the benefit of all. Science is not simply about facts, as we are often told at school, but about uncertainty and imagination and is the best way we have of discovering new things about the world we live in and beyond. It is wonderful to have leadership from the top recognising the importance of science and research for every person in this country.”
The Prime Minister concluded that the UK needs to nurture its capacity for ingenuity and a new generation of expertise. He said young people needed to be shown more of what science could offer - not just work in the laboratory but the opportunity to build bioscience businesses and apply cutting edge technology.
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