Anthony Browne is MP for South Cambridgeshire, the Chair of the Conservative backbench Treasury Committee and a member of the Treasury Select Committee.
The carbon atom is mightier than the silicon atom. Despite the current dominance of digital technologies, it is inevitable that life sciences will have a greater economic impact in the future. Earlier centuries saw economic growth driven by advances in physics and chemistry.
But in the 21st century, growth will be driven by advances in biology. Self-replicating, self-repairing molecules, and organisms have a power and complexity beyond even the most complex computer. Genomics is revolutionising medicine. We are curing previously incurable diseases; the end of cancer as a cause of death has become a realistic possibility.
Whole new areas are opening up. Altos, a start-up in my constituency, has raised $3 billion in funding, including from Jeff Bezos, because of the scientific progress they have made in stopping aging. From cultured meat to synthetic biological materials, vast new sectors are being created.
Much of this life science revolution is taking place in my South Cambridgeshire constituency. At one point in the pandemic, the Wellcome Sanger Institute had done more genome sequencing of Covid than the rest of the planet put together. One building has produced 12 Nobel prize winners.
Cambridge is a perfect example of a cluster: specialists working closely together to push forward human knowledge. Academia, the public sector, charities, and the private sector working in seamless partnership. We have two top hospitals with two more on the way, and the global headquarters of Astra Zeneca.
It is not just that Cambridge has top life scientists, but it also has top mathematicians: many of the major advances in biology are now powered by big data and artificial intelligence. We have 500 life science companies, many growing in value to over £1 billion. In the plains of South Cambridgeshire, you can find herds of unicorns.
Cambridge is booming. This results in obvious pressure points. There is a shortage of laboratory space. Housing and transport need sorting. We are in the driest part of the country and are literally running out of water. The electricity infrastructure is struggling. And the world’s top scientists come here and shake their heads in disbelief that the mobile phone coverage is so terrible.
So I wholly welcome the Government’s new ambition for Cambridge as a global technology capital: science city. There are huge economic opportunities, and many ways that Government can help. This is not just about housing: it needs to be a whole government mission. Cambridge needs to grow, but grow intelligently.
First, we must understand properly what is happening. A journalist asked me if Cambridge needs a second science park, and I pointed out we already have dozens, many of them very big, and growing rapidly. Peter Freeman, chairman of both Homes England and the Cambridge Delivery Group, has been appointed by Michael Gove to deliver the Cambridge 2040 vision, including a “new quarter” for the City. Last week I took him and his senior officials on a fact-finding whistle-stop tour around four of our biggest science parks.
Gove noted that Boston has 6 million square feet of new lab space under development. In Cambridge, planning permission has already been applied for or granted for over 10 million square feet of new lab space. It is a new bonanza with stratospheric valuations: one four-acre plot of science park recently sold for £150 million.
The main existing parks such as the Biomedical Campus, Cambridge Science Park, the Genome Campus, the Babraham Research Campus, and Granta Park all have big expansion plans. The Grafton Shopping Centre and Beehive Retail Park near the centre of Cambridge are being turned into science parks, which are also popping up in almost every village. The historic Hauxton Water Mill has been turned into a life science centre.
There are existing bodies overseeing the growth of Cambridge: Innovate Cambridge, chaired by David Willetts – my fellow ConservativeHome columnist – is promoting the range of tech sectors. The Cambridge Life Science Council, chaired by David Prior, a former health minister, has fourteen different recommendations in its recent life science strategy. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus – the leading life science park in Europe – has an ambitious 2050 strategy.
Despite headlines of 250,000 new homes, I welcome the fact that Government recognises that championing Cambridge as a global tech capital is not just about housing. Cambridge does need more housing, which is why it already has the most ambitious house-building targets of any area of the country, with 57,000 houses in the next twenty years. At least five new quarters of Cambridge are already being built out, and three new towns are being built nearby.
As Gove accepts, the biggest constraint on the growth of Cambridge is actually water, and he has set up the Water Scarcity Group. I have spent the last four years campaigning to improve the water supply, and it is good the Government supports new reservoirs, but they won’t provide water for over a decade.
Accelerating the increase in water supply would be the biggest single way the Government could boost growth in Cambridge. Because until those pipes start flowing, we have to live within the constraints of existing supplies, and that limits the growth of both housing and laboratories.
There are opportunities to improve water efficiency: the Government could give the planning authority powers to give science parks a water budget so that they get planning permission to build new lab space if they improve the efficiency of existing labs. It could also allow the planning authority to impose higher water efficiency standards on new housing, above national guidelines.
There are many risks that need avoiding. If there is too much new housing before water supplies increase, there will be no water for new laboratories; too many new laboratories, and there will be no water for new houses. If you just let all laboratories be built, we could end up with the wrong sort.
The acutest shortage is scale-up space for growing companies, and if only laboratories for major corporations are built it risks throttling the dynamic ecosystem. Just saying yes to landowners who want to build housing could limit the commercial growth space around science parks. Building all the laboratories without sorting the struggling electricity infrastructure will lead to labs without lights. Cambridge needs to remain a good place to live so it can still attract global talent.
Cambridge as a global science city needs to be a cross-governmental mission, rather than one left just to the housing department. We have the new Department of Science Innovation and Technology, which should be leading in championing the country’s leading tech sector. The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero needs to sort out the electricity supply. The Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs needs to sort out the water.
The Department of Transport needs to oversee improvements in rail connections (there are easy wins of new stations by science parks, on top of the Cambridge South Station already being built). The Department of Culture, Media and Sport needs to ensure global scientists can use their phones. And the Department of Health should commit to a new children’s hospital.
Cambridge is already a global tech capital. With the whole of the Government pulling together to further unleash its potential, it could indeed rival Silicon Valley.