Ian Pearson - Global Research Opportunities for the UK

Welcome to everyone, thank you all for coming along to start your day at the House of Commons and to hear something of the progress we are making in ensuring that the UK benefits from international research collaborations. Your presence here today shows the importance of this area and the great interest there is in the UK working with the best science and scientists globally.

We start from a position of strength – we are not playing catch-up. The UK is one of the strongest countries in the world for research and scientific discovery. We win around 10% of internationally recognised scientific prizes every year, for example just last month Sir Martin Evans of Cardiff University won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work in genetics.

We have strengths in both basic research - physics, chemistry and biology – and in applied areas such as pharmaceuticals, automotive, aerospace, materials, nanotechnology and energy technologies.

With only 1% of the population world's population the UK produces over 12% of all citations to published papers and 13% of papers with the highest impact. This makes the UK arguably the most productive scientific country in the world.

Achieving this has required investment and we have steadily increased the UK's science budget from around £1.3 billion in 1997 and we are increasing it further to nearly £4 billion in 2010. We have also increased spending on infrastructure, university research and technology transfer initiatives.

We also invest heavily in European-wide research and contribute a significant amount to the EU research budget. But we also do well out of EU programmes. As I am sure all of you are aware, the UK has long been a key player in the Framework Programme. In fact, our researchers have a remarkable record. In FP5, UK organisations received nearly 16% of the overall funding, just over €2 billion.

From the latest data available so far we have received over €2.2 billion from FP6 despite the enlargement of the EU and the greater competition this brings. In fact the UK academic sector received almost as much funding as their French and German counterparts combined, almost one fifth of the funding to the academic community across Europe as a whole. Much of this success has been driven by the well established RCUK office in Brussels.

Our scientists benefit from international collaboration. The percentage of UK research papers with a foreign co-author has risen to nearly 40% and there is clear evidence that co-authored papers usually have more impact than ones produced by purely domestic authors. This is a win-win situation for both UK researchers and our international partners.

It is clear that greater collaboration between the world's leading research nations is vital to drive innovation based on advances in science and research. We have a long and strong history of collaboration with the United States in particular and recognise the value in building upon this relationship.

The next step in this process takes place in the US later today when our ambassador in Washington, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, will be hosting a reception at the embassy to celebrate the launch of RCUK's latest international office. The office will be located within the embassy and work closely with the FCO's Science and Innovation Network to foster closer collaborative UK-US links.

With the opening of this new office, the benefits of UK-US collaboration will not only be felt by the scientific community but by the public who will benefit from collaborative science that seeks to solve the critical issues of the 21st century, such as disease and climate change.

Recognising the importance of science and innovation, the UK government set out its long-term vision and commitment to invest in this area in its Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-2014. The Global Science and Innovation Forum (GSIF) was formed as a result, recognising that science and innovation are international endeavours where the UK must be an effective and active global player. We are also looking at the recommendations in the Sainsbury Review.

GSIF has fostered a coordinated and shared approach across key government departments and non-governmental actors and published their strategy for international engagement in research and development in October 2006. This strategy emphasised the UK's ability to attract overseas researchers.

GSIF concluded that UK support in this area is having a positive impact and should be continued across a range of fellowships and at a level that will maintain this impact in the light of increasing global opportunities.

I am therefore delighted to announce today that the Royal Society, British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and RCUK have agreed to collaborate on a new international fellowship scheme and alumni engagement programme for the UK.

Such a fellowship scheme will be an important tool in establishing the UK as a partner of choice for research collaboration; for building sustainable international networks with the best institutions and individuals abroad; and in attracting outstanding researchers to the UK.

This alumni engagement programme will underpin the fellowship scheme by ensuring that we maintain links with international research fellows in the long term. This will mean that the UK continues to derive lasting benefits from this initiative in the future.

The Government will be providing £13.4 million over the next 3-year spending period to enable the partners to deliver the scheme. This financial commitment underlines the Government's strong focus on continuing to raise the UK's profile in international research.

I particularly welcome the establishment of the UK Higher Education International Unit, to coordinate and promote activities designed to support UK universities in a globally competitive world. The International Unit is funded from across the HE sector for the benefit of the sector, and I am particularly pleased that it is engaged in an area as important as international research collaboration.

I am sure you are now keen to hear more from RCUK and Universities UK on the value of and challenges brought by international collaboration and I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to deepen your own personal networks this morning.

Thank you.