£52 million is the latest sum to be pledged towards re-invigorating Britain’s life sciences and industrial sectors, as announced by the Universities and Science minister David Willetts. Over half of the money (£32.6m) will be provided by the government to create the Science and Industrial Partnership (SIP), a consortium made up of around 100 leading science sector employees. SIP aims to create around 7,800 skills opportunities over a 2 year period including new apprenticeships, industry degrees and technical training.
David Willetts announced the £52m of funding this Tuesday.
Image Credit: Eddie Mulholland
Led by Britain’s renowned pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), but including American companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer and the Swiss-based Novartis, the consortium agreed to provide the aforementioned skills opportunities after the government granted much of the funding. However, £20m of funding will be contributed by some of the life science companies and a further £31m has been promised by industry in in-kind contributions.
The chair of the SIP board Malcolm Skingle, Director, Academic Liason, GSK, said, “The life sciences sector in the UK continues to evolve at a rapid rate and so it is essential that the next generation of scientists have the skills that both they and the business require to be successful in the future.”
Maintaining a highly skilled UK workforce is clearly essential for the country to compete on the global stage of both academic and industrial science. Cogent, a skills body for the science industries, played a role in identifying employer demand for the skills programme and Cogent CEO, Joanna Woolf said, “Cogent is delighted to be supporting the SIP, which is really focused on job creation, talent development and sector growth.”
Whether the UK will be a world leader in this competitive area in the future is still up for some debate, but the government clearly hopes that greater integration and partnership with the big players of industry will go some way towards bringing Britain to the forefront.
DBSci 