Science and Discovery Centres (Funding)

We could pursue a number of different options. Certainly, I am happy to consider all the options and to speak to my colleagues in the DCSF about them. My hon. Friend also mentioned the funding problems that Expore-At-Bristol has been having. As he will be aware, it received funding for two years from DIUS and the DCSF combined and has been part of the consortium project of the £750,000 funding that was provided through Ecsite-uk. At the moment, the DCSF is funding a science and learning centre co-located there. I am aware of some of the exciting work done at Explore-At-Bristol. I hope that the people there will want to work with the consultants that we appoint and demonstrate the impact that they are having. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North talked about catching them young, with which I agree completely. He also talked about how we as a Government and a society relate to science. Again, we will cover that in significant detail in our science and society strategy. He called for more science centres. I was pleased that he sees the value of science centres across our economy. Norwich has major centres of excellence, including the John Innes centre and the Institute of Food Research, and there are exciting plans for the development of a world-class cluster in the Norwich area. My hon. Friend also spoke at some length about Inspire, a project in his constituency that is finding itself in difficulty. I congratulate him—he is not here at the moment, but I am sure that he will read his speech, and possibly my reply—on his work to bring partners together and broker creative solutions. I think that I covered his question, ““How does this fit into the Government strategy?”” when I said that we want to evaluate science centres fully and see them as part of a coherent picture in our new science and society strategy. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon made a thoughtful contribution. I mention in passing that Science Oxford, a science centre in his area, has benefited from consortium money provided by Ecsite-uk. I think that he is under a misapprehension that science centres should be seen as the same as schools and hospitals. We do not expect schools and hospitals to make a profit, but we do expect them to operate within their budgets, and I would expect science centres as well to operate effectively within the budgets available.