Thank you, Presiding Officer. I make it plain that the burden of this statement is not connected to the announcement of £14 million. I accept that that announcement should perhaps have been made on a different occasion. However, the burden of this statement is quite different and I am sure that members are looking forward to hearing it.
This is actually my first opportunity to brief members on the significant economic impact of the ambitious and ground-breaking innovation centres programme, and I welcome the chance to do so. Developed in partnership with the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, innovation centres are collaborations between universities, businesses and other partners to enhance innovation in and across Scotland’s key economic sectors.
When it was launched, the initiative was widely welcomed as having the potential to greatly improve university-business engagement, by bringing together the people who are best able to resolve many of the challenges that face industry in Scotland, while harnessing many new opportunities. I want to share with the Parliament some indications of positive progress and what we are beginning to expect in terms of impact from our significant investment.
As members know, Scotland has five universities in the world’s top 200—more than any other country per head of population. We have a track record of securing competitive research funding from a range of sources, which reflects the excellence and global reputation of our universities. Our universities excel when it comes to research; Scottish universities have more citations than those of any other country, relative to gross domestic product. We are disproportionately excellent at what we do.
The Government has shown its support for our universities and research through investments such as the global excellence initiative. In an independent Scotland we can and will do even more.
Our universities and research facilities are a core strength in our economy. They are an important growth sector, which is why we sought to improve the links between our universities and public and private sectors, to increase the economic and social benefits of innovation. We start from sound foundations. Our research pools, for example, have embedded a collaborative approach across the university sector, to provide a critical mass of research excellence, which enhances our competitiveness on the world stage. We were the first country to develop such a strategy.
Our collaborative approach has been instrumental in attracting international research centres to Scotland, such as the Fraunhofer centre for applied photonics and the first international Max-Planck partnership in the United Kingdom. That is why the British Council said in a recent report that
“a joined-up and collaborative sector, helped by its modest size and a Scottish ethos of education as a public good”,
is one of five strategic assets of Scottish higher education.
Nevertheless, we are always ambitious to do more. Innovation Scotland epitomises our approach. Launched last October, it gives focus and impetus to improving the effectiveness of universities and businesses working together to increase innovation in the economy. That approach is assisting in developing collaborative approaches to spin-out support, supporting easy-access intellectual property and extending the role of Interface to better facilitate business and academic partnerships.
Innovation centres are a manifestation of that approach in action. Research pooling was about improving the quality of our research through collaboration across the university sector, and innovation centres build on that research quality and collaborative strength by promoting innovation in a commercial context. Innovation centres are large-scale, ambitious projects of excellence. They are about developing the best environment for businesses and academia to interact in, taking innovation to another level. They are part of a cultural shift that brings the innovation and creativity of our academic sector to the heart of our business life and puts business drive firmly into the heart of our academic sector. The centres help the research community to understand the needs of its particular industry and they help industry to understand the assistance that can be delivered through research.
Scottish Government investment in the overall programme is substantial through the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council providing up to £124 million over a six-year period. Around £80 million of that is already committed to the first eight innovation centres, including £2 million for MSc places to improve the connections between businesses and universities. This morning, I announced £14 million from within the £124 million that will support major capital and infrastructure investment across the programme. For example, the stratified medicine Scotland innovation centre, which I visited this morning, will receive £4 million to help to secure national health service data sets and establish a next-generation genomic sequencing platform at its interim facility in Inchinnan.
We are under no illusion that these are large-scale ventures that will need time and patience for their potential to be fully realised, but the public investment that we are making is being more than matched by the innovation centre partners, who estimate their contribution to be around £200 million in cash and in kind. That reflects the strong support from industry, which recognises the potential ambition of the programme. Those partners all come with high expectations and high reputations. Time precludes my naming them all, but they include GlaxoSmithKline, Thales UK, Amor Group, Philips Healthcare, Cisco Systems, Thermo Fisher Scientific—which I visited this morning—and Aridhia Informatics. There are many others, and it is not only the major global players that are involved. Our small and medium-sized enterprises are playing an active part and there are strong plans to ensure that the innovation centres are incubators for new activity.
The first phase of the innovation centre programme was launched last year, with the digital health institute, stratified medicine and sensors and imaging systems. Since then, two further innovation centres have been launched—industrial biotech and aquaculture. Later this year, we will see the launch of innovation centres covering oil and gas, big data and construction. The centres have already begun to make their mark on the landscape, and we should not underestimate the benefits that the centres will bring to the people of Scotland and to wider society. Stratified medicine is recognised as the future for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Tailoring treatment to those who will benefit most increases cost effectiveness. It is about getting the right drug to the right person at the right time.
The real burden of this statement is about what is happening now. Across the innovation centre landscape, we are seeing advances in skills, processes, collaboration and performance, leading to a significant longer-term impact on our economy. I can announce to Parliament today the first indication of the scale of that economic impact coming from the innovation centre programme. Based on the business plans for individual centres, the cumulative boost to the Scottish economy could reach a massive £1.5 billion and up to 5,000 jobs could be created across the wider economy. Those figures reveal the impact that our world-class higher education sector working in partnership with business can deliver—more jobs, better jobs and a stronger economy. The figures illustrate the scale of the economic potential. We are now working on a comprehensive baseline economic impact assessment so that we can fully monitor and evaluate the success of the innovation centres as they all come on stream. That will confirm the considerable impact of the strategy.
There are opportunities—which we are now witnessing—for the innovation centres themselves to stimulate productive new collaborations. For example, stratified medicine is talking about working with big data, and the University of Edinburgh is leading a bid to secure the knowledge innovation centre on active and healthy ageing from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The aim is to develop new health and care goods and services with business and economic models that enable systemic change. The innovation centres will play a role in strengthening the bid. The bid is truly collaborative, with expert partners from Scotland, the international commercial community and other parts of Europe working together to secure the project. We support that and we wish the bid team every success.
We believe that we now have a community of innovation across Scotland that is in a strong position for attracting European Union investment. Indeed, some of the innovation centres are talking to Scottish Development International about their connection to the wider international community.
We are maximising the potential of university-business collaboration to support innovation and economic growth. However, we can do more. Independence can reinforce our global approach by providing access to more of the policy levers required to support innovation, including key financial tools. For example, “Reindustrialising Scotland for the 21st Century: A Sustainable Industrial Strategy for a Modern, Independent Nation”, which was published in June, highlighted how, with independence, future Scottish Governments would be able to develop an overarching framework that aligns innovation activity and considers new opportunities to support innovation. That could be through tax incentives such as allowances on research and development expenditure or reductions in payroll taxes for employees directly involved in R and D, such as the scheme in the Netherlands.
Independence would also allow us to better support a thriving internationally connected and competitive university sector through the removal of a damaging immigration policy that often prevents our universities from attracting and retaining talented researchers. Our priority must be the reintroduction of the post-study visa, which will attract the best researchers from across the world to work in Scotland.
Innovation centres represent a major step forward in university-business engagement. They bring with them the opportunity for a wide range of social and economic benefits to Scotland. We can begin to quantify those and I hope that they will be welcomed by members across the chamber.
We should all support the initiative. The ambition and vision of the innovation centre programme is remarkable. I hope that the whole chamber will wish the partners every success over the coming months, years and decades as we work together to ensure an innovative, collaborative, independent Scotland.
There was little that was surprising in those questions, but I am grateful that Neil Bibby welcomed the investment and the excellent work that is being done across the country.
I pay tribute to the work of academics for yes, which has very successfully—[Interruption.] I am sorry to hear Labour members jeering. It does not become them, I have to say. [Interruption.]
Order, please.
I think that the cabinet secretary would agree with me that research underpins innovation and our economy. Sir Philip Cohen is the world-leading researcher who set up the life sciences industry in Dundee, which accounts for 18 per cent of our local economy. What is the cabinet secretary’s reaction to the statement in the published letter that Sir Philip Cohen signed that the creation of a post-independence common research area was
“an undertaking fraught with difficulty and one that is unlikely to come to fruition”?
I call Colin Beattie. Please be brief.
The cabinet secretary will take questions on the issues that have been raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions. However, we are tight for time, so if members are not succinct that will, unfortunately, eat into other members’ ability to ask questions.
If questions and answers are more succinct, I might be able to call everyone who wishes to ask a question; if that is not the case, I definitely will not be able to do so.
It is already happening. I am very happy to introduce the member to places where that is real—it is not theoretical. For example, five courses are now being offered by the University of Stirling and Forth Valley College for which students matriculate jointly. There are no barriers there.
Two weeks ago, I met some students from those courses in my office, having visited the University of Stirling to see what they were doing. All over the place, the barriers between further and higher education are breaking down. Further education now delivers between 20 and 25 per cent of our higher education in Scotland. There is a huge range of opportunities.
We must go with the flow on that and encourage more of it. We should also encourage a great deal more online learning, because online learning is undoubtedly where the future lies, even for institutions in Scotland that teach conventionally. A huge number of exciting things are happening. I am really glad that the member is engaged with that, and I urge her to persuade her front-bench colleagues to stop looking backwards and to start looking forwards at education.
I would like to pay tribute to the work of academics for yes, which has managed to illustrate very strongly that, far from being—[Interruption.] Presiding Officer, I am sorry, but—
Sir Philip Cohen has undertaken many things in his lifetime that have been fraught with difficulty, and has succeeded admirably, so I urge him to continue with his confidence and his ambition.
I would put into the balance alongside that the statement that Sir Tom Devine made at the weekend—[Interruption.] It is unusual for anyone to laugh at Sir Tom Devine; I find Jenny Marra’s attitude very strange. Sir Tom Devine is probably the leading historian in Scotland, and he is much feted by the Labour Party, including by Gordon Brown. He has come to the conclusion that independence is the right thing for Scotland, as has—because Ms Marra wishes to enter other worlds—Michael Atiyah, who is probably the leading mathematician in the world today.
Many academics welcome the opportunities that independence will bring and really want to make it work. I urge Jenny Marra to get out there and work with people of ambition to ensure that even those who have some doubts are encouraged to deliver for Scotland.
I warmly welcome the Scottish Government’s support for the LifeKIC bid, which the University of Edinburgh is leading and in which the digital health institute is a key partner. Does the cabinet secretary agree that, if successful, that bid offers considerable economic and social benefits to Scotland?
Can the cabinet secretary assure us today that the Scottish Government’s commitment to higher education will continue after a yes vote?
I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement.
I welcome the investment in innovation centres and the fact that, this morning, the cabinet secretary visited a centre in Renfrewshire that will receive £4 million-worth of investment.
I praise the work of industry and our universities. It just goes to show that the Scottish Government has—right now—significant powers to help to improve education and the economy, and to show what can be done when the Government works closely with industry and our universities.
The cabinet secretary acknowledged that he is not announcing any additional money for innovation centres today, despite his press release this morning suggesting the opposite. We have known about the investment figure of £124 million over six years for many months.
The cabinet secretary said:
“We are disproportionately excellent at what we do”
in relation to university research and funding. He is absolutely right. Does he accept the fact that in 2012-13 Scottish universities received £257 million, or 13.1 per cent, of UK research funding, which is significantly more than our 8 per cent share of UK gross domestic product or our share as 8.4 per cent of the UK population? That is not to mention the 13 per cent of the £1.1 billion funding that our institutions received from UK charities which, again, is an above-average figure.
The cabinet secretary also mentioned attracting international investment. Does he not accept that we benefit from having 270 UK embassies across the world helping to sell our universities and industry? How many embassies would an independent Scotland have?
I very much welcome the announcement, and I was delighted that the cabinet secretary visited the stratified medicine Scotland innovation centre in Inchinnan in the west of Scotland. Will the cabinet secretary outline the potential economic impact of that particular innovation centre?
The centre offers a range of opportunities and projects a range of positive outcomes. Anna Dominiczak, who is the head of the department of medical, veterinary and life sciences at the University of Glasgow, was present this morning, along with the people running the centre, including Mark Beggs, who is its chief executive officer. We went through their business plan, which projects the creation of an estimated 300 to 400 jobs. The additional gross value added is estimated at £68 million.
Much more excitingly than the figures, though, the people running the centre also went through the difference that its work will make to individual lives. They are doing tremendously exciting work on oncology and on issues such as arthritis, which we discussed in some detail this morning. It shows that it is possible to deliver the right drug, at the right time, to the right person, in a way that makes a huge difference to the individual patient and to the health service. Such work will attract many, many people throughout the world to come and see what is happening here and to emulate it. In every sense, the figures are good; the potential is even greater.
Cabinet secretary, if anyone jeers in Parliament, I will deal with it. Please continue and answer the question.
I do. Dr McLeod has some experience of the university sector, and I know that she is familiar with the work that goes into such bids. I am certainly of the view that the more we encourage such ambition from our universities across Scotland, the greater the success that we will have.
In Dumfries, for which the member is a regional representative, considerable work is being done on ageing and end-of-life care. The further development of excellence in health and ageing in Edinburgh will help the work that is being done in Dumfries, so I think that there is a tremendous opportunity to join up work across Scotland.
Yes, of course.
Mr Bibby, you are over time.
Finally, does the cabinet secretary not also accept that, as much as he tries to reassure industry and universities, the real threat to research and development funding in Scotland is his plan to separate from the rest of the United Kingdom?
If members are brief, I might be able to call everyone.
Thank you very much.
I hope that the work of academics for yes will be taken on board by those who are making so much noise, because the group has clearly illustrated and proved that academics who have real ambition know that independence will work for them and will allow them to go out into the world and sell their excellence. The decisions on what is funded in research are based on what is excellent; funding is not a charitable action by research councils or anyone else. We have the best in the world; that will not diminish the day after independence.
The power of independence will allow universities to be sold throughout the world as Scottish universities. Very often their light is hidden under a UK bushel, and I have to say that some of the embassies that I have worked with have not done the selling effectively. I am delighted at the prospect of our academics going out into the world and doing what they do well. I simply urge Mr Bibby to be as ambitious and confident as our Scottish universities are.
The assertions about independence aside, I very much agree with the content of the cabinet secretary’s statement, particularly his point that Scotland is disproportionately excellent in this area thanks to collaboration. He will have seen the Wellcome Trust’s observation that
“Differences in the regulations and governance systems that introduce additional burdens, or that are perceived to be burdensome, can restrict international collaborations and make countries less competitive.”
Does he agree with the Wellcome Trust? If so, why is he determined to create borders in an area that gets its strength from being borderless?
That concludes questions on the statement.
I long for the day when we can do what we do well: debate the issues that are important to the people in Scotland, instead of independence.
That said, Scottish Conservatives thank the Scottish Government for notice of the statement, which was issued to the media at 06:00 this morning.
We welcome that £14 million of the £124 million that has already been announced will be used as capital investment for Scotland’s innovation centres to improve collaboration and innovation between industry, universities and our key economic centres. It is a mark of the success of devolved decision making in Scotland within the United Kingdom, and the money will be very welcome in finding new treatments for disease, new approaches to sustainable food and more energy-efficient homes.
However, given that further education was not mentioned either in this morning’s Government press release or in the statement that we have just heard, will people in further education be given access to such opportunities equal to our universities?
The innovation centres are undoubtedly a welcome initiative, but they are very reminiscent of and identical in purpose to the intermediary technology institutes, which were launched back in 2002 with almost four times the budget, even then. When the current Government inherited the ITIs, it first slashed their budgets and then killed them off a couple of years later. Why does the cabinet secretary think that he can make the idea work a second time round with a much smaller investment, when the Government failed so badly before?
The reality is that research knows no borders and works across borders, so that is not a problem for the Wellcome Trust.
The Wellcome Trust and other trusts have been scrupulous in raising issues but not coming down on either side in the debate. I have met a range of charities that support research and all of them, without exception, have said, “Look, come and talk to us after 19 September.” They will make things work, because they know about the excellence of Scottish research. The problem for the people who raise such barriers—such as, I am afraid to say, Liam McArthur—is that they seem to lack confidence in the excellence of Scottish research. I have no such lack of confidence.
In his statement, the cabinet secretary spoke about the opportunities of independence, as well as the economic and societal benefits. He will be aware that, in evidence to the Education and Culture Committee, the chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council made it clear that, subject to discussions on the details after a yes vote, the ESRC would support a single research area for Scotland and the rest of the UK. Does the cabinet secretary agree that that blows a hole in the no campaign’s scare stories on research funding?
I wish that the member had been with me this morning in Inchinnan, where we saw enthusiasm, commitment and ideas. Even Iain Gray’s dour approach would not have depressed the centre’s staff. [Interruption.]
Mary Scanlon asks a good question, but I must reassure her that the statement is not just about the £14 million, which I think has been well accepted, but about the £1.5 billion by which this programme of innovation centres is expected to boost the Scottish economy. The member should think big, not small; the £14 million frees up further potential and the £1.5 billion is the potential that is being freed up.
Mary Scanlon’s question about further education is very apposite on the very day on which we complete the reform programme that we started three years ago. After my visit to Inchinnan, I went to the further education strategic forum in Livingston, where I talked to many people about the opportunities and the excitement in the sector, now that it has been reformed and is focused on delivery. Indeed, the question that Ms Scanlon has asked is one that I discussed with the chairman of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council over the course of the morning.
There will, of course, be many opportunities for people in education, but I encourage Mary Scanlon to think about education as a joined-up, not divided, process. Further and higher education are now very close together—indeed, they are sometimes indistinguishable—and it is important that all members in the chamber catch up with that.
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s statement and its ambition and vision for Scotland’s future. Is he able to confirm that the innovation centres represent a massive step forward by bringing the academic and business worlds together, and by providing for collaboration and innovation across both sectors? Furthermore, does he agree that the strength of Scotland’s higher education sector is one of the reasons why Scotland can approach independence with full confidence?
There are many things that blow a hole in the case that is put by the no campaign, because it has no merit whatsoever. Another thing that blows a hole in that case is the reality of research collaboration across Europe, including the way in which research councils are working with other countries and countries are opening their research funds to other countries for true collaboration.
We are in a global, connected world of research. Scotland is in an enormously strong position, and I think that we should think big and be ambitious rather than try and hide away, as the no campaign would force us to do.
Order, please.
As ever, George Adam is absolutely right. The higher education sector is world-beating—we have the best higher education sector in the world. However, we have heard voices from Labour in particular that want to run that down, diminish it and underresource it. We hear it all the time, and Labour members cannot get away from that fact. [Interruption.] What we need to do is to continue to build and develop that sector—[Interruption.]
Iain Gray is the main exponent of a view that everything was wonderful under the previous Administrations and it has all gone to pot. Fortunately, that is not what the people of Scotland think. They think the reverse of that. They look at what was happening then and realise how bad it was.
As the cabinet secretary will be aware—Mary Scanlon has already made reference to this—colleges would welcome the opportunity to work more closely with the universities and industry on the skills agenda. The cabinet secretary said that the potential existed to do that, but is there scope for a more formal exercise to formalise the relationship between universities and colleges? Will funding be made available to make that happen, especially in light of the recommendations of the Wood commission?
Order, Mr Bibby.
Was that an answer?
He just makes it up.
Order, please.
Mr Bibby! Order, please!
The announcement today is warmly welcomed. The innovation centres are a testimony to the excellence of the Scottish universities. However, they are interested to know how much extra money would be available for academic research under the subscription form of academic funding if Scotland was to be independent, as opposed to what they get with the United Kingdom.
They do not get it with the United Kingdom—that is quite an important issue. They get money from the Scottish Government and from the research councils, which is taxpayer funded by the Government as well—8.8 per cent of that money comes from us. The reality is that they would not only continue to have access to that but they would have a wider world to play in. They would be able to develop very positively their projection in that world. The potential is great.
It is wrong to see the research sector as simply beneficiaries of some UK largesse. Of course, Professor Bryan MacGregor of academics for yes points out that the real danger is that—as with health—the cuts that are well known south of the border, which are eating into research funding and science and technology south of the border, will eventually have their effect in Scotland.
We need to build that sector and the wider education sector to ensure that we get literally the best of both educational worlds.
We move on to the statement on innovation centres.
14:42Previous
Point of Order