Pre-Budget Report

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those issues. I have talked to him about them before. I have visited the stem cell research that is being done in Newcastle, which is one of the world leaders, and Britain is one of the world leaders in stem cell research partly because of what is being done in Newcastle. We are determined to support that. I think that he will find that the new arrangement, by pooling the NHS research budget and Medical Research Council money and working with the companies, allows us to be more proactive in the projects that we can support to make new drugs and new treatments more easily available. I am absolutely sure that Newcastle’s leadership on that will be rewarded when allocations are made.