§ 29. Dr. GibsonTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what action she has taken to promote the interests of UK science in Europe. [49401]
§ Mr. BattleUK researchers are active in a wide range of scientific activities in Europe, through the European Union's framework programmes, through major European collaborations such as CERN and the European Space Agency, and through bilateral and multilateral collaborations between institutes, universities and individual researchers. At the level of the European Union, the Government have played a leading role in encouraging UK scientists to participate in the current, fourth, framework programme and in negotiating the fifth framework programme, currently under discussion.
UK scientists perform very strongly in these programmes, and are expected to continue to do so in the future. The Government also play a proactive role in respect of our membership of the major European collaborations, with a view to ensuring high quality, cost effective opportunities for UK scientists to work with others in these areas. And we are active, through maintaining close and constructive bilateral relations with other European countries, in ensuring that the UK is seen to be keen to create opportunities for mutually beneficial collaborative research partnerships at all levels.
We also consider that useful work can be done at the European level to promote the role of women in science. The UK actively supports the Commission's development of measures to encourage action on the under-representation of women in science. This parallels the activity of the Office of Science and Technology's Development Unit on women in science, engineering and technology. As part of the UK Presidency, I chaired the round table discussions during the European Commission Conference on Women and Science in April.
We have also been keen to encourage discussion at European level of key issues surrounding the development of new technologies, such as biotechnology. Among measures to encourage this the UK Presidency and European Commission jointly organised a Biotechnology Round Table in June which brought together representatives from the EU institutions, industry, research, consumer, environmental and other interest groups.