17:38 Thursday 12th March 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
CHRIS BERROW: Today is BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s first ever Science Day. It coincides with the 21st Cambridge Science Festival. Well later our very own Naked Scientists will be broadcasting live from the Pitt Building in Cambridge as part of the Festival, and they’ll be live on the Mark Forrest Show from seven o’clock. David Willetts is a British Conservative Party politician, and was the Minister of State for Universities and Science until July last year. Well I spoke to him earlier today and asked him why funding for science is such an important thing.
(TAPE)
DAVID WILLETTS: There’s a great story of Margaret Thatcher being presented with advice on whether or not she should invest in British participation in the Large Hadron Collider. And all the cautious official advice was it’s expensive and couldn’t be afforded. But she wrote on the submission, ‘But it’s very interesting, isn’t it?’ So that’s the first reason. And then the second reason is that as a nation that’s strong in science, it helps to drive R&D, it helps us be strong in the high tech industries of the future, it attracts overseas investment. So it’s worthwhile, and it also has an economic benefit.
CHRIS BERROW: There are big problems that the UK is facing at the moment, climate change, energy storage, things like that. And presumably science is one of those things that can help with a huge range of issues.
DAVID WILLETTS: Absolutely, and it can help tackle all the big global challenges, and you’ve given some very good examples, climate change, where you’ve both got to understand it, and also then of course develop technologies to help to deal with it. I think also science has got enormous potential to help us in the life sciences, you know. This amazing discovery from Cambridge of the structure of DNA has over the decades since proved to be one of the great research programmes of all time. And we’re still discovering all these connections between different aspects of our genetic code and our propensity to disease. So that’s an incredibly powerful application of science as well.
CHRIS BERROW: You’ve mentioned technology. Tell me about the concept of the eight great technologies. It’s something that I know you championed during your time as Science Minister.
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