13:00 Chi Onwurah (Labour)

Science and engineering are an important part of our economic prosperity, especially now we are seeking to rebalance our economy, get out of a double-dip recession made in Downing street and at the same time address that grave legacy of the first industrial revolution: climate change. Research compiled by Josh Lerner of the Harvard Business School, looking at the last 100 years of growth in various economies, suggests that only 15% of growth in any economy can be accounted for by increasing inputs. That means that 85% of growth in economic output must come from innovation. Science and engineering drive innovation; without them, we will lose our place as a leading economy. Other countries know this. Some 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated from Chinese universities in 2006 alone. In the UK, more young people chose to study fine art than physics. Fine art is a fine choice, but so is physics.

The consequences can be serious. The BBC’s approach to scientific balance seems to be culled straight from the world of politics, without any understanding of scientific method. Even though the vast majority of scientific evidence supports climate change, the BBC will put up one pro-climate change and one anti-climate change scientist and think that that constitutes balance. Equally, its general interest programmes will be chock-full of historians, artists, celebrities and journalists, but with few engineers or scientists.

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