The UK life sciences sector directly employs 140,000 people and injects £30.4 billion to UK growth and yet, discussing the life sciences still sometimes draws a blank expression.
This I’m sure in part, is due to the nature of the life sciences; involving the scientific study of living organisms such as microorganisms, plants, animals, and human beings.
Naturally, this sort of study remains largely confined to the academic sphere. However, the life sciences is a vastly dynamic and fast growing industry, with businesses taking on more of the study to drive forward progress in farming, health and technology.
Furthermore, for instance, concerns over climate change have brought a new focus into public sector research and development funding. That is why innovation in the agri-tech sector can help optimise food security of wheat, the UK’s most significant arable crop amongst others.
In the future, the life science industry will contribute $2 trillion to the global economy. That is why the UK, with the life sciences industry representing one of the more dominant economic sectors, is keen to develop a long term strategy to ensure our sector not only keeps pace, but leads the world in driving innovation, productivity and growth across all spheres life sciences attracts.
As a firm advocate for the sector, just this week I visited Catapult, a UK company at the forefront of investigative bio-research, I got to understand more about the business aspirations for the industry as well as for patients and consumers. Their research also explores the natural properties within our blood to help defend and prevent against cancers or other aggressive diseases.
As an industry keen to manufacture, this could deliver even more highly valued, skilled jobs, drive progress and more efficient working across sectors, and present new opportunities for global trade and investment. However, as I see it, this can only be achieved by bringing consumers on board; communicating progress and drawing interest from residents.
So what does any of this mean for the East? Last week I raised these sentiments in the House, and asked that the Minister consider a greater role for the life sciences in East Anglia. Already, a number of major businesses specialising in the life sciences, are scattered across my constituency and with other innovators across Cambridge. The global centre of Cambridge has a prime opportunity to develop a wider skills network across our region, reaching the likes of Treatts, Muntons or Adastral Park.
By joining these business and academic networks and allowing them to share skills and technologies, we can widen their capabilities, whilst drawing benefit to the local community. For example, driving local infrastructure, whether the quality of our A14 or access to sufficient broadband, is essential if businesses are to network, grow and the local economy to prosper.
This is exactly why our ‘No More A14 Delays’ campaign has worked, with local businesses pushing the campaign, to stress the opportunities and economic advantages of better connectivity. Already, the East is a net contributor to the Treasury and is set to return £8 billion by 2020. With a vastly improved A14 for instance, made safer, wider and less congested, we can unlock even greater potential.
Therefore, at a recent gathering of the Suffolk Chamber of Commerce we discussed what matters to our local area. Working alongside the business community in these areas, not only drives business confidence but provides a perfect platform with which to push ahead on such important issues. That is why just yesterday, the ‘No More A14 Delays’ Steering Group led by myself as Chair and coordinated by Suffolk Chamber of Commerce, met to devise the next stage in our campaign. Pushing ahead with our bid for funding will take into account more than just the benefits of a better drive. This is about delivering for Suffolk and East Anglia; using our unique selling points of sectors like the life sciences, to make the case to improve all our lives. But to start, the A14 as the ‘lifeblood’ of the eastern economy, needs to be fit for purpose.
Published in the East Anglian Daily Times