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A Labour government would pursue a more collaborative science policy than the Conservatives and seek to close damaging rifts with the sector, Chi Onwurah, shadow science minister, has vowed.
Labour plans to boost investment in areas such as life sciences while showing more respect than the current administration for the political independence of research funding bodies, Onwurah said.
The Conservatives have targeted making Britain a “science superpower” by 2030, but tensions with institutions have risen in areas from immigration fees for overseas researchers to attacks by Michelle Donelan, science secretary, on the “slow creep of wokeism”.
In March, the government paid £15,000 to settle a legal complaint brought by a researcher on a UK Research and Investment-affiliated equality and diversity committee whom Donelan had falsely accused of backing or sympathising with Hamas.
“My message to UKRI and to scientists and researchers is that a Labour government would want to work constructively and collaboratively with them and to champion the sector,” Onwurah said in an interview.
“So we’re not talking so much about being a ‘science superpower’,” we’re not talking about kicking ‘woke’ out of science — and we’re certainly not accusing top scientists of supporting Hamas.”
Onwurah added that she did not understand the term “wokeness”, which she described as Donelan’s “specialist subject”.
Science and technology would be “at the heart” of Labour’s ambition for the UK to achieve the highest sustained economic growth rate among the G7, Onwurah said.
“We think that science is a huge opportunity for the country,” she said. “I want to make sure that innovation works for everyone and benefits everyone and that’s actually what Labour values are.”
Labour has said it will aim for at least 3 per cent of GDP to be invested in research and development across the public and private sectors, which is roughly the level of investment made today. A Labour government would seek to boost life sciences, increasing research and development spending by £10bn a year, Onwurah said.
A Labour administration would set strategic priorities but support the so-called Haldane principles that research organisations were best placed to make individual funding decisions, she added.
Labour would engage more substantively with emerging technologies, Onwurah signalled. She contrasted the party’s pledge to regulate the biggest artificial intelligence companies with what she characterised as the laissez-faire approach of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Sunak vowed “not to rush” to set rules for the fast-evolving technology, but the Financial Times reported last month that the government had quietly begun to craft legislation. “He’s made his focus AI while saying there’s nothing to be done,” Onwurah said.
Onwurah, who described herself as a “tech evangelist”, studied electrical engineering before working in business on UK and international projects including the rollout of Nigeria’s mobile phone network. She later worked for Ofcom, the communications regulator, before becoming the MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central in 2010.
Onwurah voiced support for efforts to increase diversity in science. She has spoken about the “quite horrendous” racism and misogyny she faced while studying at Imperial College London during the 1980s.
While there had been improvements on addressing gender discrimination in science, many more female researchers than male “decide that research isn’t for them at the end of their degree”, she said.
“That is saying something about the environment in which they are studying,” she said. “I can tell within 90 seconds of walking into a university department whether diversity [efforts are] a tick-box exercise or a real living part of their culture.”
