Science and Discovery Centres (Funding)

I hope that the Minister will not be uncharacteristically disingenuous again. He is not responding to what our report said, nor to what my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) said. The report did not say that we expected every science centre to be funded by the Government. We said that those that were MLA accredited in the same way as the museums would be eligible for that funding. However, it would be entirely up to the sponsoring organisations to decide whether they could be grant-aided. That is what happens now. As for whether science centres should be regarded in the same way as schools and hospitals, that was not my hon. Friend's point. He was commenting on commercial viability being the criteria by which the Government will decide whether the centres will be allowed to continue. Both in the report and in response to the Minister's predecessor, Lord Sainsbury, we commented strongly on the fact that that was not the criteria that the Government had set for the STEM agenda—an objective that science centres were trying to fulfil.