Explaining the importance of science to Britain's success, and to the security and prosperity of the whole world, Mr Straw said:

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"It's a real honour to be here at the Royal Society, an institution with such a long and distinguished history, and the heart of British science today. Let me also thank David Sainsbury, who is here today, for the fantastic work which he is doing as Science Minister, keeping science at the top of the Government's agenda. I trained as a lawyer and then became a politician. But I have always taken a keen, if layman's, interest in the history of science and science policy. As shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science from 1987 to 1992, I used part of my scarce allocation of debates in the House of Commons to focus on science policy. As Home Secretary from 1997 I worked to toughen our approach to animal rights extremists – a point to which I want to return later in this speech.

The links between Foreign Secretaries and this great institution itself are stronger than you might think. We are almost neighbours, with my official residence just down the road. Seven Foreign Secretaries have been Fellows of the Royal Society. One of them, Balfour, was later a Chairman both of this institution and of the Medical Research Council; and another, Lord Salisbury, was such an enthusiastic amateur scientist that he almost killed himself while experimenting with chemistry. The Royal Society has had its own 'Foreign Secretary' since 60 years before the Foreign Office was established, after a bequest from a Fellow in 1719 to pay for the appointment of an officer 'to carry on a foreign correspondence'. Today, the Foreign Office and the Royal Society are working together on international science policy, from questions of regulation to actively promoting British science abroad.

Those links between us illustrate my central point today: that the United Kingdom's success, at home and internationally, crucially depends on the success of our science, and on our place in global scientific collaboration. The great challenges for the coming century are ones where global science and international policy need to come together: poverty; climate change; sustainable development; the spread of HIV and AIDS; the access to secure and reliable energy supplies which our economies need. And in a fiercely-competitive global market, Britain can prosper only if we successfully exploit and develop our comparative advantage as a cutting-edge, knowledge economy which attracts the best science from around the world.

Achieving those aims requires two things: that we build on the strength of our science and our scientific culture at home; and that we act internationally to exploit the benefits of global science. I want to take those themes in turn, beginning with our work here in the United Kingdom.

We can be proud of the UK's strong scientific record, and of the enormous public support for British science and scientists, as we saw in an opinion poll recently. With 4% of the world's wealth and 5% of its investment in research and development, the UK produces 10% of all scientific papers and 12% of citations; and counts more scientific Nobel Prize winners than any other country except the United States. Our success today builds on the achievements of the past. British scientists helped to decipher the structure of DNA, and were the first successfully to clone a mammal. Today, Britain's biotechnology sector is second only to the USA world-wide, accounting for more than 40% of the products in late-stage clinical trials in Europe.

Fifteen of the world's top 75 medicines were discovered and developed here in Britain. Today the UK leads the world in developing new ones – as in our work on microbicides, which have the potential to revolutionise the global fight against AIDS by empowering women to protect themselves against infection. Britons were pioneers on everything from the jet engine to computing, the Internet, radio and television. Today, British engineers are making the wings and engines for the world's largest passenger airliner; and British companies are global leaders in communications. I accompanied HM the Queen last year on her State Visit to France, where we visited Airbus's assembly plant in Toulouse. When Rolls Royce engines are fitted to these aeroplanes, over half of them – measured by value – comes from the UK, an impressive achievement.

This Government came to office in 1997 committed to increasing funding for science in this country, so as to build on the UK's scientific success and ensure that we maintain our world-leading position in the future. By delivering on that commitment we are sending a strong signal to others around the world that the UK is an international partner of choice for scientific research.

By 2008 we will have doubled, in real terms, the Government's investment in science from the level in 1997, taking it to £5 billion per year. Through the 10-year Science and Innovation Investment Framework we have set ambitious goals for the future, and allocated the resources to achieve them. We are increasing funding for biotechnology and nanotechnology, two cutting-edge fields for the future; and investing an extra £150 million to help the UK lead in international climate science. We are delivering to the Medical Research Council the largest-ever sustained increase in investment, to fund work focusing on stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes, medicines for children, and mental health.

We are allocating £30 million over three years to improve skills in engineering and the physical sciences, including new funding for the Royal Academy of Engineering to recruit the best engineers to the UK. And we are investing in innovation – £300 million over the next three years – so as to ensure that the best UK research and discoveries are developed in Britain by British businesses, to the good of our economy as a whole. Looking back to the debates when I was in Opposition in the 1980s, Britain was good at the raw science but sometimes not so good at turning it into business success. That has changed today. The Technology Strategy Board, led by business, is working to identify emerging technologies and to foster the scientific research which business needs. Only last week Lord Sainsbury announced a £100 million competition to support technologies in fields such as renewable energy, bio-processing and nanotechnology. The Government's tax credits for Research and Development are providing £600 million worth of incentives for investment in innovation; and we are striving to make them the best such incentives in the world.

That investment is delivering impressive results. The UK now has the highest share of foreign direct investment in business research and development among the G7, showing our success in today's global market for innovation. Britain's universities are enthusiastic and successful research partners for business. One list of the world's top 50 universities now counts eight British members, against only two from France and one from Germany. And the value of spin-off companies floated on the stock market last year alone was greater than the government's entire investment in knowledge transfer – a sign of the economic pay-off which our investment in science helps to deliver. Ten or fifteen years ago, that was by not by any means the case.

But scientific success depends on more than investment – it requires too the right regulatory framework, and a culture which promotes innovative partnerships and collaborations.

We have debated the questions of embryo research in this country for over 20 years. Based on extensive public and parliamentary discussion in that tradition, the Government was one of the first anywhere to ban human reproductive cloning, in legislation which we passed in 2001.

But we were equally clear then – and remain so now – that therapeutic cloning and stem cell research, in a properly-regulated environment, holds enormous promise of new treatments for diseases which kill many millions of people every year. Last May, we therefore created here in the UK the world's first stem cell bank. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has granted the first two British licences for therapeutic cloning. We are investing £45 million in stem cell research over three years. And as Gordon Brown announced last week, we are launching the UK Stem Cell Initiative to formulate a ten-year vision for this research and to create a platform for co-ordinated public and private funding.

The same desire to encourage crucial research in this country underlies the Government's determination to protect scientists who are using animals in vital research – within what is the best framework of animal research regulation and controls anywhere in the world. Research using animals has saved the lives of many millions of people, and indeed of animals too; and it has the potential to save many millions more. As Home Secretary, I was responsible for the regulation of laboratories using animals; and more widely also for liberty and order in the UK. I was outraged by the attacks on scientists and their families by so-called 'animal liberation' extremists. I myself know one family who was personally affected.

To fight that extremism, I put through legislation to allow the police to crack down on demonstrations by activists, and to prevent trespass in research facilities. The courts are increasingly using the Anti-Social Behaviour Orders which we have introduced against extremists. We are improving police intelligence and giving the courts better guidance on sentencing. And new legislation which Charles Clarke is putting through Parliament makes four more important improvements. Harassing a worker at home will become an arrestable offence. Courts will be able to bar activists from going near a particular address for three months. An amendment to harassment rules will protect groups of connected people, such as employees of the same company. And there will be a new offence of causing 'economic damage' to animal research organisations, with a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, to counter the tactic of intimidating suppliers and customers.

Alongside that framework of rules and protection for science in the UK, we have worked to promote a culture in which innovative ways of conducting scientific research are promoted and allowed to thrive. Here too, Britain today is leading the world. The new UK Clinical Research Collaboration, for example, has brought together a new alliance of patients, the NHS, business, universities, charities and the Medical Research Council with the aim of making this country the top location for medical research, from clinical trials of new treatments to understanding disease. The National Cancer Research Network has established 34 networks across England, leading to a doubling of the number of patients participating in clinical trials.

And we are increasingly working in partnership with others who fund research, especially with charities. Scientists supported by the Medical Research Council are working in the Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium, funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, which is conducting world-leading research on correcting the defective gene which causes this, the UK's most common life-threatening inherited disease.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

That is the picture in the UK: strong investment, effective regulation, and a culture of innovation. It is a combination which is vital to making Britain the world's leading location for industries based on research, science and knowledge.

Yet to maintain and develop Britain's position at the heart of international science, we need not just excellence at home, but a strong programme of action abroad. We need that in order to engage in work on today's global challenges; to learn from the best of what is happening elsewhere; and to attract researchers and investors to the UK.

That makes science central to our foreign policy, contributing to almost every aspect of what we want to achieve.

For a long time, the size and extent of the FCO's international science network has lagged behind the growing importance of science in our foreign policy. But today that has changed. The Foreign Office now has dedicated science officers in 34 of the UK's posts across 22 of our most important partner countries. Altogether 97 full or part-time staff work for the FCO on science. Science is a key part of the work of many other of our posts around the world. And the UK's strategy for international science is shaped by a strong partnership, under the chairmanship of Sir David King, bringing together departments across government and those from outside such as the British Council, the Research Councils and the Royal Society itself.

When I travel abroad and hold meetings with Ambassadors or High Commissioners and their senior staff in our posts, it's now commonplace for science attachés to come along and contribute to those discussions – not just on science but on every aspect of our diplomacy and our objectives. That's a sign of science's central role in our foreign policy today.

Today's global challenges require us to use science as a tool of diplomacy, and to build the scientific consensus which is the necessary foundation for effective international action.

Work on climate science is therefore at the heart of our efforts this year on climate change, as Presidency of the G8 and of the EU from July.

Our international science network is making an important contribution here. Two months ago in Japan I launched a major new collaboration, initiated by our Embassy in Tokyo, bringing together British scientists from the Hadley Centre in Exeter – the world's best modellers of climate – with Japanese colleagues, to work on one of the world's most powerful computers, in the city of Yokohama. Last year our Embassy in Berlin organised a conference opened by Her Majesty the Queen which brought together German and British scientists, industrialists and policy-makers, and put climate change at the top of our common agenda. Our science team in Houston, Texas, last month organised a conference on protecting vulnerable coastal cities from the extreme events brought on by climate change, bringing together experts and policy-makers from London and Houston to look at the lessons for their own cities and others elsewhere. And we are working internationally to agree a site for a new International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, an important part of our support for the energy sources of the future.

Energy and climate change are therefore major concerns; but they are only part of a much wider effort around the world on the issues which bring science and diplomacy together. Take development. The Commission for Africa, in its report published ten days ago, highlights science as a central theme. African countries need not just new drugs and crops, but the scientific capacity to develop and use such technologies to improve the lives of their citizens. I greatly welcome the role which the Royal Society is playing in helping to build that capacity. Just last week, Hilary Benn announced an extra £50 million per year of extra spending by the Department for International Development on promoting research on sustainable agriculture, climate change and disease particularly in Africa. We are also working on biodiversity in the developing world, for example through the Darwin initiative; and on sustainable development, where I launched last week a new strategy for the Foreign Office as we implement our part of the Government's wider Sustainable Development Strategy.

The links between global science and our own safety and security are stronger than ever. We have signed with the United States its first ever bilateral Science and Technology Agreement on Homeland Security, opening the door to closer collaboration in security-related science such as cyber-security, bio-defence and the detection of explosives. As chair this year of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the UK is working to familiarise scientists with the Convention's prohibitions, and develop codes of conduct for scientific work. Most of you will know that with my French and German colleagues I've been involved in lengthy negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme – and without good scientists to advise me on the nuclear fuel cycle, and effort by me and my colleagues to understand that scientific background, those negotiations would not have got even as far as they have. And in the aftermath of the catastrophic tsunami in Southern Asia, Sir David King is leading a group of experts advising on natural hazards and on early-warning systems to help to minimise the impact of such physical threats in the future.

Alongside such work, our global science network is helping to ensure that we get the international regulatory framework right. On the question of a ban on therapeutic cloning, for example, our specialist science officers and our diplomats around the world have helped to shift international opinion and get the idea of a UN vote on such a ban taken off the agenda. We regularly share the UK's own experience in passing effective legislation on cloning with other countries who request it.

And our work on science is central to promoting British business abroad, learning from others' successes, and attracting new investment to the UK. Working with the Global Watch Service run by the Department for Trade and Industry, and with UK Trade and Investment, we are ensuring that British companies can access and learn from leading science and technology specialists around the world.

Around Europe, our science network is helping British scientists to win research funding from the EU's Framework Programmes, and ensuring that European funding is used to drive up the performance of the EU's economies. British scientists today get more money from the EU than those from any other member state – a sign of this country's pre-eminent place as a centre of scientific excellence in Europe.

We are running major, year-long campaigns to raise the profile of British science in the US and Canada, and in China, working with the British Council and others. (I'm pleased to see David Green from the British Council here today, and we work closely with him.) And we have agreed with India to upgrade our joint work on science and innovation, so as to ensure that we both benefit from what is an increasingly high-tech and prospering relationship between us.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Those examples are only a few from many – but they show the breadth and extent of what we are doing. Our international work, and our investment here in the UK, is all aimed at one goal: to put the UK at the heart of the global scientific collaborations of the future. Britain's economic prosperity, and our ability to make a positive difference in the world, depend on that.

I've stressed that science is a thread running through every aspect of the Government's foreign policy and our relationships with the UK's international partners. But the Government can only support the international science which you – the professionals, represented here by the Royal Society – will do yourselves. And it is you, scientists and the organisations who represent science, not Governments, who are in the end the best advocates for British science and innovation.

So I hope that in the years ahead we can work even more closely together, in pursuit of a common goal. Together we can help to ensure that Britain is the best place there is for the global science which will shape our future, and the future of our world."

Related links to this article:
FCO [1]

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e-Government National Awards 2004: Winners were announced on 19th January
The e-Government National Awards (www.e-GovernmentAwards.org.uk [2]) recognise and praise the best strategies, achievements, teams and individuals in UK e-Government. The guest of honour at the 2004 Awards dinner was Ian Watmore, head of e-Government at the Cabinet Office e-Government Unit.

Full details on winners can be found at this link. [3]

A gallery of photos of Awards winners and the dinner can be found at this link. [4]

Organiser for the awards was PublicTechnology.net, the leading online news provider for those in UK e-Government and public sector IT, with 29,300+ readers per month. The Awards were supported by the Cabinet Office e-Government Unit [5] and Socitm [6]. Platinum sponsor was Intel [7] and also a sponsor was Jobsgopublic [8].