As has been widely publicised in recent years, the East is at the forefront of the offshore wind revolution that is already strengthening our UK energy resilience and driving forward the decarbonisation of our energy network. 

That’s why, having been a leading figure over several years calling for a proper offshore solution for delivering this crucial Offshore Wind Infrastructure, I welcomed the opportunity on Monday to be involved in the latest meeting of OffSET MPs – this time with Andrew Bowie MP, the Minister for Nuclear and Networks at the new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Together, the OffSET team reaffirmed the need for the Government to do everything it can (as well as encourage key stakeholders like National Grid, National GridESO, OFGEM and developers) to ensure the Offshore Transmission Network that it previously agreed to commit to is delivered as soon as possible – and in a manner that encompasses as much infrastructure as possible. The group also made clear it was vitally important that people and local communities are properly included in, and given a say in, consultations about how electricity infrastructure is delivered both onshore and offshore – most notably in the case of East Anglia Green.

While the news that the ESO have opened a new public consultation on East Anglia Green is very positive indeed (see more here), there remains much more to be done. The Minister himself acknowledged that, praising the work of the OffSET team and local campaigners thus far – making clear that it has focussed the minds of the key stakeholders, who are taking the points being raised very seriously indeed.

The Minister also reassured us that, while there will always be a need for a certain amount of electricity infrastructure onshore, the Government is committed to the Offshore Transmission Network concept it has agreed to (see more here) and believes that the work to achieve that is moving forward positively. He also emphasised his belief that the communities hosting major pieces of Nationally Significant Infrastructure should also be fairly recompensed in terms of community benefits by the relevant developers.

Rest assured, this remains a key campaign for me here in Norfolk – and I will also continue to do all I can to support local communities now engaging in the community benefit discussions being held by Vattenfall.

To read more about my ongoing campaign on this, please visit my website here.

For the UK to compete in the global race for Science, Technology and Innovation, we have to think more globally, collaborate more deeply and move more quickly.

That’s why I am delighted to have been able to negotiate, and today sign in Tokyo, the UK-Japan Science and Technology Collaboration Agreement to deepen our longstanding and historic UK-Japan research links into a more strategic collaboration built on our three pillars:

• Science and Technology
• Innovation
• Global Research and Development security

This latest Science and Technology Collaboration Agreement heralds the dawn of a new era of deep collaboration across a range of key sectors including semi-conductors, quantum, engineering biology, particle physics, neuroscience, genomics, biobanking and space tech.

Having spent fifteen years starting new technology companies in the Eastern region before becoming an MP back in 2010, having been the UK’s (and world’s) first Life Sciences minister and now being the Minister of State at the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and having long pursued my mission to help put the Norfolk Innovation Economy on the map, I am excited to see the benefits this collaboration will bear for the UK.

Our region is at the forefront of many of these high growth sectors and will play a big part in shaping the world of tomorrow. To see more about my local work to support these sectors and their businesses, putting the Norfolk (and wider Eastern) Innovation Economy firmly on the map while spreading jobs, opportunity and prosperity to our local communities, please visit my website campaign page here.

Further to my previous updates on the efforts I and several other Norfolk and Suffolk MPs are making to support those affected by Apostle Accounting, I was pleased to be involved in a meeting yesterday with HMRC to discuss the ongoing situation and represent our affected constituents.

Secured by my colleague Jo Churchill MP (Member for Bury St Edmunds – the constituency in which Apostle Accounting are based), the meeting saw a number of Norfolk and Suffolk MPs involved. I took the opportunity to reaffirm the points previously raised in the joint letter I submitted to the Chief Executive of HMRC with Dr Dan Poulter MP, Duncan Baker MP, the Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP and Tom Hunt MP, highlighting in particular the need to swiftly investigate the matter and provide additional support to those affected. 

Rest assured, I will continue to follow this developing case closely, working with fellow parliamentarians to provide support for those affected and to ensure that HMRC strengthen their systems in order to try and prevent such situations in future.

If YOU have been affected and are yet to contact me as your local MP (or you are yet to contact your own local MP), please do get in touch.

To see my previous updates on this matter (including more information on the content of the joint letter), please click here and here.

Are you an upcoming school leaver, someone in search of a job, or even someone just looking for a new exciting career or opportunity?

Are you a local business interested in speaking to LOCAL people about opportunities in their area.

Then Wayland Chamber of Commerce want to hear from YOU!

Following the success of last year’s brilliant Jobs Fair in Watton (at which over 300 jobseekers met with almost forty employers from the Dereham-Watton/Wayland-Attleborough-Wymondham area), the Wayland Chamber of Commerce are once again arranging this wonderful event – supported by the local Department for Work and Pensions team, local councillors and myself.

If you are interested in attending, please do get in touch via george.freeman.mp@parliament.uk I would be delighted to put you in touch with the Wayland Chamber and DWP teams.

It was a special honour to welcome the H.M. The King on his first official visit after his coronation to Cambridge University’s Whittle Laboratory where Rob Miller and his team are pioneering global leadership in the science, technology, and innovation of Jet Zero.

The East is already playing a frontline role in the “Green Revolution” leading the way in so many of the pioneering and innovation economies and sectors of tomorrow. I am determined to do all I can to ensure Norfolk’s role in the “Innovation Economy” and to further develop the “New Anglia Cluster” with its links into the Cambridge - Norwich Innovation Corridor.

To learn more about my work in advocating for Norfolk’s “Innovation Economy”, please click here.

To find out more about how I have been pushing for the Norwich – Cambridge rail upgrades, please click here.

UPDATE – 3rd May 2023

Further to my previous posts on 5th and 24th April 2023, I am delighted to be able to share the below article published in the EDP this week – further highlighting why I, and many others, are opposing the idea of a new Garden Town to the north of Dereham.

A link to the online article can be found here.

(To see my previous webstories on this issue, please scroll down below the pictures of the article).

UPDATE – 24th April 2023

Further to my post on 5th April 2023, I am delighted to be able to share the below Op-Ed I recently wrote for the Dereham Times – outlining in further detail why I am opposing the idea of a Garden Town to the north of Dereham.

5th APRIL 2023 WEBSTORY

For decades now, our planning system hasn’t been delivering the housing we need, in the places we need it, for the people who need it. For too long, the system appears to have been driven by the national volume house builders who too often make their money from land banking and high density commuter housing estates on the edge of existing developments – rather than through a proper planning system run to deliver for the people who need planning to work for them, instead of being done TO them.

I’ve long been concerned by the amount of development coming to areas like our own in rural Mid Norfolk – which is often inappropriate, “industrial” in scale and unsustainable. While most of our villages can take and are indeed up for (when properly asked) taking some additional new housing (without which our communities will gradually fade away), I fundamentally believe that more needs to be done to give local communities a greater say in how they develop in the years to come (with greater protections), which is why I have been so vocal in my opposition to the way so many large national developers abuse and take advantage of the planning system to dump such inappropriate and unsustainable developments on our towns and villages.
 
That’s why, through The Norfolk Way project I set up before I became an MP, I have been so vocal in advocating for a better model of growth and development that places greater emphasis on delivering small pockets of housing of the type and aesthetic desired by local communities, and in the places they earmark. I truly believe the spirit of Localism enshrined in the 2011 Localism Act should be enhanced, with the Act itself strengthened to remove some of the loopholes we’ve seen exploited. (To read more about my views in full, please visit my ‘Planning and Protecting Our Rural Heritage and Landscape’ campaign page here) I was delighted to see the NPPF reformed in the autumn by Michael Gove to give more power to local planners.

I continue to make the case I have long made that the right way to plan housing is to give local councils, democratically accountable to the local residents they serve, the freedoms and incentives to plan properly for the right sort of housing and growth where it is needed ie:

• around hotspots of economic growth
• on brownfield sites in areas needing regeneration
• around growth towns with the infrastructure and services available to sustain further growth
• in villages with a Neighbourhood Plan setting out the amount of housing they are happy/able to take and which ensures affordable & appropriate local housing for local workers and residents

That’s what the Breckland and South Norfolk Council Local Plans rightly aim to do. What we don’t need in rural Norfolk is massive commuter estate “New Towns” dumped in the middle of rural mud Norfolk without proper infrastructure, facilities, sustainable transport links or fit with the existing pattern of development.

The North Elmham New Town

The North Elmham New Town would also represent massive development of the precious River Wensum chalk stream habitats (not to mention a Site of Specific Scientific Interest).

That’s why I was delighted to chair a meeting on Friday in North Elmham with local parish councils and local councillors Bill Borrett and Cllr Gordon Bambridge to make clear that the idea of a new town in the area will NOT be supported by ourselves as elected local  representatives.

Bill and Gordon confirmed that Breckland Council are NOT zoning this area for major housebuilding, and will oppose a re-application of the New Town as we did successfully last time it was proposed.

New Towns and Garden Villages

Whilst there are places in the UK where there may be a strong case for a new generation of garden towns and villages, with all of the necessary infrastructure and transport links (either to drive regeneration as in parts of the post-industrial North, or to alleviate the pressure around major growth hits spots like Cambridge), North Elmham is not a sustainable location.

I can think of several possible sites in East Anglia that could perhaps take such a garden town or village: specifically the dilapidated station sites on the Cambridge-Ely-Brandon-Thetford-Attleborough-Wymondham-Norwich railway line – as part of the Oxford-Cambridge East-West Railway Development Company I have championed over the years, and especially during my time as Minister for the Future of Transport at the DfT.
 
However, I’ve also been very clear that, for any such development, we need to be sure that:

1. Any such developments must avoid the loss of ancient woodland and high quality farmland
2. We see a serious commitment to Net Zero and building into the plans a higher quality, cleaner, greener standard of life – not continuing to same old, lazy model of house dumping that sees thousands of additional vehicles tearing through old country lanes and causing more congestion and rat-running
3. There is serious investment into public and private infrastructure – with proper road, rail, cycle and walking routes
4. Any such development is planned appropriately and sustainably, and that it makes sense in the wider community context.

 
I have not seen any evidence to suggest that a garden town or village would be appropriate in this part of Mid Norfolk, and given the rural and inaccessible nature of North Elmham and the surrounding villages, the already serious congestion on the nearby road network and the nationally significant environmental and habitat importance of the Wensum Valley, I cannot envisage any circumstances in which this idea could be taken seriously.

To my mind, it would make far more sense for such a significant level of growth to be focussed down closer to the A11 Corridor – which Breckland Council themselves have, rightly, recognised is the key growth artery in our region and have tried to focus the bulk of the district’s future growth. I know the Leader of Breckland Council, Cllr Sam Chapman-Allen, and both Cllr Bill Borrett and Cllr Gordon Bambridge strongly support this.

That’s why I was delighted to join the c12 local parish councils representing the areas that would be affected by this idea to make clear my opposition.

Next Steps

At the meeting we agreed some important Next Steps:

• To reconvene a meeting of ALL the parish councils in the affected area after the forthcoming local elections on May 4th to make sure all write to Breckland Council formally to express their concerns.
• Bill and Gordon and I will liaise to ensure all the local residents who object have their objections properly acknowledged by BDC.
• I will invite my neighbouring MP, Jerome Mayhew, to join that follow-up meeting given a number of his Broadland communities are in close proximity to the site around North Elmham and would also be affected.
• I will write to Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) and the Minister for Housing to make clear why any New Towns and Garden Villages should only be  delivered in the right locations with the associated connectivity, infrastructure and services required) and not in inappropriate locations with the obvious environmental, sustainability and transport issues this scale of development would inevitably threaten.

 Please be assured that I will keep on this in the weeks and months ahead.

George Freeman, Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation answers MPs’ questions to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Commercialisation of Research

Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)

2. What steps she is taking to support the commercialisation of research. (904747)

The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation (George Freeman)

Better commercialising our UK research is completely key to our global science superpower and domestic innovation nation missions, and a key component of our science and technology framework and this Department’s work. I am delighted to report that spin-outs from universities have gone up sixfold in the past nine years, to £2.5 billion last year, and in the life sciences sector that has gone up 1000% since we took office. We are creating jobs and opportunities for innovation clusters all around the UK, including in west London.

Dr Huq 

We have just heard about uncertainty about Horizon. In addition, there are no more European structural funds and under-investment in R&D. We are hurtling down the global rankings for clinical research trials. The Minister just mentioned life sciences, but last week Novartis, the Swiss pharma giant, pulled out of a major trial for cardiovascular drugs in this country for those very reasons. When will the Government admit that, rather than an example of confidence in the world-beating, post-Brexit life sciences sector that the ex-Health Secretary who went to the jungle claimed at the time it would be, that decision shows what an unmitigated disaster Brexit has been? When will they fix this mess?

George Freeman 

Here we go—Labour talking Britain down again. The truth is that I am not at all complacent about the clinical trials numbers. At the Life Sciences Council, in the next few weeks, we will be setting out a very clear plan to reverse the decline since the pandemic in the NHS.

The hon. Lady might have mentioned the major investment coming into west London—her part of the world—including the MedTech SuperConnector, the spin-outs there and SynbiCITE, the synthetic biology hub. She might at least acknowledge the major investment —billions of pounds—from Moderna and BioNTech into this country, laying the foundation for a next phase of science innovation. With the life sciences sector, we are in a global race, but we are still leading in the technologies of tomorrow.

Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)

Can my hon. Friend comment on the Department’s 10-point science and technology framework, which will help provide the long-term funding needed to turn the start-ups he has mentioned into sustainable, successful, globally leading businesses?

George Freeman 

I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a strong champion of that agenda. In the new Department’s science and technology framework we have set out a long-term, 10-year view of the serious reforms that we need to make to procurement, regulation and skills across the whole of Government if we are to drive our science superpower agenda. A fundamental part of that is converting the health of our start-up ecosystem into scale-ups. That is why the Treasury is leading on the re-regulation of pension funds—so that we can unlock some of our pension trillions and put it into supporting our companies to grow here rather than go to NASDAQ.

Hansard

Commercialisation of Research: North-east England

Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)

4. What steps she is taking to support the commercialisation of science and technology research in the north-east. (904749)

The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation (George Freeman)

Having worked on coalfield regeneration in the north-east, I am delighted to report that it is becoming a science and technology powerhouse economy in the UK. I have been up three times since taking on this role, particularly to see NETPark, the extraordinary north-east technology park, whose third phase of expansion has now been announced. We put £5 million into helping it grow, and world-class companies such as Kromek are now there. We have also put £5 million into the Northern Accelerator in collaboration with six north-east universities, and we have nine Catapult hubs in the north-east. Let us say it loud and clear: the north-east is building the new economy of tomorrow.

Mary Kelly Foy 

Led by Durham University, the Northern Accelerator has invested more than £100 million in partner university spin-outs in the past five years, bringing skilled jobs and opportunities to my constituents and across the region, but if the Minister is really serious about levelling up Durham, can he explain why the north-east receives just 4% of Research England’s budget and six times less money than London?

George Freeman 

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s leadership on this issue, because it is really important. Traditionally, our research funding follows excellence, and that is why, say, Northumbria University has shot up the league tables in the last few years from 42nd to 16th—it is knocking on the door of the Russell Group—and the northern universities are delivering increasingly excellent science. But there is something else. Last year there was £50 billion-worth of private investment in research and development, which is matching the public investment, and as we go to £20 billion of public R&D, a wave of private money will start to come into the north-east. The answer to her question is that this is about building the applied science into the industries of tomorrow, which the north-east is doing.

Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)

Does the Minister agree that the Catapult centres in the north-east, as well as the manufacturing technology centre in my constituency, are the way forward in commercialising some of the great ideas that are coming from the academic world?

George Freeman 

Yes, I absolutely agree. That is why we have put £1.9 billion into the Catapult network—our network for deep industrial collaboration with our universities. In the north-east, we have the offshore renewables Catapult in Blyth, the digital Catapult in Sunderland and the satellite applications Catapult in Durham. This is a deep investment in the north-east economy of tomorrow.

Mr Speaker 

We now come to the Scottish National party spokesperson.

Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)

One of the companies based in NETPark is Pragmatic Semiconductor, which is innovating chip production. It has indicated that it would consider moving its operations overseas if the UK fails to produce a semiconductor strategy that funds and supports chip production. We have been asking for this strategy for years now, so can the Minister assure the House not only that the strategy is imminent and will be published very shortly, but that it will properly fund and support companies such as Pragmatic?

George Freeman 

Yes. The Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), has already met the company concerned, and in a matter of days we will be setting out the semiconductor strategy, which will answer exactly the question that the hon. Lady has raised.

Hansard

Topical Questions

Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)

Last month, Sir Patrick Vallance stepped down as the Government’s chief scientific adviser after five years in the role, in which Government investment in science has doubled. Most of all, he became a household name through his handling of covid and the leadership that he showed then. Will the Secretary of State join me in thanking Sir Patrick for all his service to the country and in welcoming his successor, Dame Angela McLean, and wishing her all the best in the role?

The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation (George Freeman)

May I, as Science Minister on behalf of the Government, pay tribute to Sir Patrick and thank Dame Angela for taking on the role? Sir Patrick has been a stalwart servant for science and for this country during difficult times.

Hansard