Chris Skidmore is Minister of State jointly at the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He is MP for Kingswood.
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It is surprising that the nuclear industry remains without a seat around the table at COP26. They deserve to be an integral part of the negotiation.
Without China and India onboard, the ability to tackle climate change will become a losing battle.
Currently the UK spends around 1.7 per cent of its GDP on R&D. Yet the US and China are heading towards three per cent GDP, and others even more.
Never mind that such a person would never pay off what they owe: the eye-watering fact is that interest itself becomes 68 per cent of the total debt.
Our new agency, with radical freedom to fund blue-sky innovation, is overdue. But its funding is still less than one per cent of UK R&D funding.
By seizing our moment, there is no better way of the UK demonstrating its belief in those famous words, per ardua ad astra.
The Prime Minister is right to put research and development at the heart of his plan to build back.
Too much learning has been lost, and too many children will find their educational outcomes affected, to simply return to business as usual.
In spite of Cummings’ departure, DARPA should remain a manifesto priority: we need its approach to risk – and indeed failure.
The world of work has moved on, so that training, and indeed retraining, needs to happen not just for 18 year olds, but everyone throughout their lives.
Those who don’t want to study or debate the past but tear it down should be strongly resisted.
I’m delighted that the Government is today unveiling 20 new University Enterprise Zones. These new UEZs will be based in universities right across the country.
We are providing funding to help service leavers to go to university, and scholarships for the children of those killed on duty.
I hope this work, which entails listening to party members, communities and businesses, will help to shape the future thinking of the Party.
Five task forces cover energising our economy, transforming our public services, building a fairer society, sustaining our democracy and shaping a Global Britain.