by Labor has promised to rip up restrictive planning rules and build more labs despite Nimbys complaining they can spoil views.
Scientific real estate, like the housing market, is at the center of a major supply issue, with research being hampered by a shortage of laboratory space and other key infrastructure.
Peter Kyle, the shadow secretary for science, innovation and technology, said too much red tape was a “massive barrier” to the success of British science.
He promised that if Labor won the next general election, he would reform planning regulations to make it easier for companies to access essential laboratory space for vital research and development.
“Labour will support our scientists not the new labs blockers, our planning reform will build the economy of the future,” Mr Kyle said, speaking exclusively to the Telegraph in his corner office at Portcullis House above the Thames.
“We desperately need labs, we desperately need computing power, and we desperately need cloud computing infrastructure. All of these things are currently being held back by the planning system.
“Under Labour, if you’re a company that needs lab space, computing power or cloud computing, you’ll have a government and you’ll have a secretary of state who will partner with you to make sure you get it as quickly as possible.”
It comes as Labor is in the midst of a house-building push to help it win a large majority and allow it to build on the green belt.
The party is reportedly prioritizing a dozen seats where house building is a key issue for voters to boost its electoral prospects, and Kyle hopes to use this public sentiment to expand the scientific sector as well.
Mr Kyle hopes things like blocking a “nationally important” data center being built next to the M25 will be avoided because it will spoil views from a footbridge over the country’s busiest motorway.
Mr Kyle says key projects that meet Labour’s four industrial missions – delivering clean power by 2030, harnessing data for the public good, looking after the future and building a more resilient economy will be accelerated – on past planning blockades, regardless of damage. scenes or anesthetic buildings.
Labor and the Conservatives want to turn the UK’s best research skills into economic output, and hope to encourage and facilitate a more entrepreneurial spirit among academics.
But it is difficult to make university spin-outs commercially viable and a lack of laboratory space is stopping ventures before they start, as planning applications are blocked by local councilors and residents.
Statistics from estate agents Bidwells show there was an 850,000 sq ft shortfall in lab space last year, and rents have increased by more than a quarter in the past two years.
Meanwhile, British Land research shows that the US city of Boston has 10 times more laboratory space than Oxford, Cambridge and London combined.
Two thirds of people are in support of building a laboratory in their local area, according to a survey by the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE). Labs are as popular as new schools or wind farms, according to data, because they bring in high-paying jobs and boost the economy.
A clear opportunity for all parties
Rebecca Hill, advocacy and engagement manager at CaSE, said: “Not only do the community support local R&D developments, they see them as an asset to their communities. There is a clear opportunity for politicians from all parties to build on that public desire.”
Mr Kyle plans to cash in on this, and aims to add more than £72 billion to the Treasury’s coffers by deploying digital technology across the economy.
Stability, he says, is the key to this because science is a slow process and therefore especially vulnerable to the freneticism of modern politics. Because of the instability, he says, the Conservative regime has failed to fulfill its promise to turn Britain into a “scientific superpower”, leaving UK scientists in a worse position than their European and global counterparts. .
The UK left Europe’s main science programme, Horizon, after Brexit, only to return last year as an associate member and for the Government to claim victory.
The UK is only an associate member of Euratom and is no longer part of the Erasmus exchange programme, and scientists are being put off working in the UK by high visa costs and strict immigration laws.
“We need a government that looks to the 2030s and beyond, and seizes the opportunities that come our way – not a government that is always looking back, trying to replace something they carelessly lost,” said Mr. Kyle.
He lays the blame for the subsequent chaos and scientific obstacles in the country at the feet of his colleague, Michelle Donelan, the Science Secretary.
Ms Donelan recently used £15,000 of taxpayers’ money to settle a libel claim after a British scientist was a Hamas sympathiser.
Civil servants were working on the defamatory letter, which was posted on Ms Donelan’s personal Twitter account, until midnight on Friday night when she was instructed.
Mr Kyle accused Mr Donelan of “seeking a phantom threat” instead of focusing on his remit, adding that “dysfunction not only creates headlines and titillation of daily politics but has a major impact on economic health our nation on the front line. line”.
“This round of ads, followed by underperformance, followed by cancellation, followed by new ads must stop.”
Labor hopes the NHS can become a standard bearer for innovation, with a plan in place to remove the many layers of bureaucracy and siloism that have fostered a systemic inability to widely adopt technological improvements.
His close working relationship with Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, with whom he shares an office, led to the co-signing of Labour’s Life Sciences strategy, which promises to use the health service’s big data to “lead the world in clinical courses. trials”.
Mr Kyle hopes to fast-track the use of technology across the country to end postcode lotteries due to individual trusts deciding which new technology and systems to use.
“The NHS has improved a lot when it comes to clinical trials,” he said. “The problem comes at the next stage, that is once that innovation has been created.
“The NHS has been fantastic in spreading that innovation across the NHS for the benefit of all patients.”
