What are the grand challenges facing our society? And how will BEIS play a leading role in solving these?

Solving the Grand Challenges was one of the three key objectives I established for BEIS – finding innovative ways to help us:

• live longer, healthier lives;

• boost productivity right across the UK;

• seize the extraordinary opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution - from automated transportation to artificial intelligence, and from robotics to advanced manufacturing to space technology

As part of this, we announced a wave of programmes - worth a total of nearly £500 million - to help improve lives and increase productivity:

• research into care robots that could make caring responsibilities easier; 

• research into teenage mental health issues; 

• developing supercomputers to better predict everything from weather events to traffic jams, 

• creating a new productivity institute to level up right across the UK

• and even digitising museum exhibitions to make them accessible to everyone 

Projects like these mean our brilliant UK science sector can create real change that benefits us all.  Whilst Secretary of State we announced the intention to create a UK Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) - a new body that will fund pure scientific discovery, using the best brains to develop new ideas that can change the world.

We also launched the world’s largest genetics project, which sequences the genomes of 500,000 volunteers. This public-private collaboration will help scientists to understand, diagnose, treat and prevent life-changing and life-threatening diseases such as cancer and dementia. 

And to help us attract the best and brightest scientists to come and work on projects like these, we announced an unlimited fast-track visa scheme for the world’s top scientists and researchers, and a two year work visa for overseas students coming to the UK to study.  

The Queen’s Speech committed to prioritising investment in infrastructure and world-leading science research and skills - helping us improve lives and productivity across the country. 

But we also looked outward. To build on the UK’s existing world leading expertise in space, we announced record investment in the European Space Agency to deliver international space programmes over the next 5 years.  

ESA brings together countries to collaborate on projects like the International Space Station and the ExoMars programme, which sends a UK-built rover to Mars to search for signs of life.  The investment will help us in many different ways - from monitoring the impact of climate change, much of which can only be seen from space, to protecting our power grid and improving communication and connectivity.