Life Sciences Businesses

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I hope I have answered this to some extent. There is no limit to the amount of work that we can do to get more investment into this sector. It starts from the smallest opportunities at universities, where we can put more money into life science spin-out funds, trying to help the organisations that pool that capital, as I say. It is about trying to establish bases in London for the key life sciences funds from abroad, and working with sovereign wealth funds, the biggest pension funds and the UK pension fund industry to put money into the industry. That is an important start.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister attend the conference on life sciences in Aberdeen on 20 March, which is designed precisely to focus on this and is being promoted not just by the Aberdeen chamber of commerce but by the Times and the industry? Will the Government attend?

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this. It was not in my diary, but this is an area of great passion for me and, if I can attend, I certainly will. I am sure some of my officials will be heavily engaged. Earlier in the year, we attended the key life sciences summit in San Francisco, which I had the privilege of attending the year before. We have to be out there flying the flag, so I totally agree with that prompt and I will look into it.

Scottish Government: Expenditure

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. In the Scotland Act, the devolution settlement is actually very simple. You can put it on one piece of A4; on the left you have devolved matters, and on the right reserved matters. The issue here is that since we have come out of the EU, in effect we have had to create a single market for the UK. The SNP loves the EU; it wants to be in a single market with 27 or 28 states, and agrees that there should be no divergence within that system. Post devolution, we now have a scenario in which we have four assemblies making laws in the UK but we want to keep the UK together. So now they are promoting a whole series of legislative moves that create divergence, which the people of Scotland do not want, especially in trade, not least as 60% of Scotland’s trade is with the rest of the United Kingdom and does not recognise borders.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, the Scottish Government have squandered hundreds of millions of pounds on mismanaged projects. They had a £2 billion underspend last year, have squeezed local government savagely and have made Scotland the highest-taxed area of the United Kingdom. Is it not clear that the current Scottish Parliament has neither the will nor the capacity to hold its Executive to account, and does not a wider consideration therefore need to be taken into account?