HC Deb 04 July 1984 vol 63 cc296-7
3. Mr. Neil Hamilton

asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many collaborative projects have received approval under the Alvey programme for advanced information technology.

The Minister for Information Technology (Mr. Kenneth Baker)

Forty-seven projects had received technical approval under the Alvey programme by the beginning of June, representing £60 million out of the £200 million of public commitment to the programme. Of these, 30 were full collaborative projects and the remainder were academic projects with industry monitoring the work. Contract negotiations are in progress on these projects, with the work proceeding on many of them.

Mr. Hamilton

The House will welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement. Is he satisfied with the level of cooperation between industry, the universities and his Department? What does he propose to do to encourage the expansion of this excellent programme?

Mr. Baker

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's remarks. This is by far the most important research and development programme undertaken in Britain since the war—probably since the development of the jet engine. It is unique because of the co-operation between competitive companies and between companies and universities. I am satisfied that that co-operation is working well. As they are unique, the projects have taken some time to get off the ground. I must emphasise the unique importance of the research and development programme.

Dr. Bray

What proportion of the money committed to the project will go to small firms and to highly innovative projects which were proposed by universities in the first place? Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the money will go to support genuinely new projects which would not otherwise have been undertaken, rather than to subsidise large firms to do what they would have done anyway?

Mr. Baker

I am satisfied that some of the projects that I announced about a week ago would not have been undertaken without the programme. The work on the word processor that can receive voice input and other work of that sort, as well as the mobile system of telecommunications, would not have been undertaken without the research programme.

I do not have in my head the exact figures for small companies, but I shall try to extract them. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is tremendous co-operation from our universities, with teams tending to be of two or three people. The Edinburgh artificial intelligence unit, which is a world leader in this area, is heavily involved, as are Imperial College and Surrey and Loughborough universities.