MPs have not yet officially learned what passed between the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya at their March meeting in a Bedouin tent outside Tripoli. However, I hope that Blair was a little less concerned about the Libyan nuclear programme per se than the extent of the black market in nuclear information that must have supplied it.
In any event, I am delighted to learn that the UK government recently put forward some firm proposals on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), aimed at reducing the threat posed by states that fail to comply with their safeguard obligations under the NPT. Lady Symons, the Foreign Office’s minister for Middle East affairs, tells me that the UK suggests such states should forfeit the right to develop the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the enrichment and reprocessing capabilities that are such sensitive matters when it comes to proliferation.
The UK also calls on all members of the international community to adopt the IAEA Additional Protocol as the basis for more wide-ranging inspections of national nuclear industries. Symons went on to say that the UK would call on suppliers of nuclear technology to see this as a key commitment when judging applications for export licence.
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I shall henceforth make it my business to keep an eye on the way that nuclear export licence applications are judged.
GORDON BROWN, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has a personal commitment to science and technology, and the scientific community should not underestimate it. In January he announced that later this year the government will develop a 10-year plan for public and private investment in science and innovation. This represents part of the outcome of the Spending Review 2004, and the aim is to provide the UK with a secure medium-term platform for growth in innovation and productivity.
The need for such a focus is candidly highlighted in the report Science and Innovation: Working towards a ten-year investment framework, published jointly by the Treasury, the Department for Education and Skills, and the Department of Trade and Industry. The report found that fewer students in the UK are choosing to study many science and engineering disciplines. The result of such trends, combined with the increasingly attractive opportunities that skilled scientists and engineers are being offered outside research and development, is that the number of R&D employers is dropping. The report concluded that these shortages will inhibit R&D and innovation in the UK – not just in these disciplines but also more widely, since much cutting-edge research is multidisciplinary.
Clearly, the UK must make sure that there is a strong supply of students at every stage of the educational system who are able and keen to study science and engineering. Industry and academics alike are rightly making clear their support for the chancellor’s focus on strengthening the UK’s science base.
