No-one would be more surprised to hear of my passion for science today than my old science teachers. I was not so much poor at science as a refusenik about it. I felt I never understood it and it never understood me. I had difficulty with the concepts; couldn't master the basics let alone the more complex theories and never saw its practical benefit. Science seemed for people devoid of emotion, the boffins, the ones who took an extraordinary interest in things I found irritating.
Today I'm born-again on the subject. In later life I have become fascinated by scientific process, its reasoning, deduction and evidence based analysis; inspired by scientific progress; and excited by scientific possibility.
And therefore I have become determined that the attitude I now regret should not be the attitude of young people today.
Yesterday I visited a small, but growing, high tech company run by engineers turned entrepreneurs who showed me two examples of their work. The first
was a device for measuring the quality and temperature of beer as it is drawn from the barrel to the glass: very practical, materialist even, but hopefully commercial. The second - the real object of the visit - was to see how they were developing pure plant oil to run diesel engines but with very much reduced levels of carbon emissions. This is visionary stuff, directly linked to saving our planet; but also hopefully commercial.
In that small company are represented the many faces of science today: invention; practical application; commercial development and moral impulse.
Later I visited the quite extraordinary Synchrotron Facility: a vast, giant source of light that in the most microscopic detail allows us to break down and analyse the composition of material. Built in partnership with money from Government and the Wellcome Trust, formed as an independent company, its staff from virtually every corner of the globe: it is at the leading edge of scientific possibility. Just in a short time, I heard what it could help with: from the storage of ever larger amounts of information; to helping cure HIV/AIDS; to deciphering how a piece of pottery from ancient Rome was made and where the materials for it were sourced. It is a kind of gigantic enabler.
All of this is very interesting, of course. But it is also utterly critical to our economy. We talk of Britain's future as being a "knowledge" economy by which we mean an economy where we do not compete on wages - how can we when China's wage costs are 5 per cent of ours - but on intelligence, on innovation, on creativity.
Intense economic re-structuring is happening here and round the world in similar economies. Basic functions are being outsourced. Call centres have come and in some cases are now going. Manufacturing is having to revolutionise every decade just to stand still. Financial capital and technology are mobile. Human capital is what it's about.
For Britain, science will be as important to our economic future as stability. We have to be a magnet for scientific endeavour, attracting the best people, turning the knowledge into commercial enterprise, forming the collaborations and partnerships here, in Europe and across the world that keep us right at the new frontiers science is perpetually staking out.
We have come a long way in the past 10 years - science is in many ways the secret success story of the Government. But we need to do much more.
In particular, we need our young people today to embrace science enthusiastically, to realise that challenges like climate change can only be beaten by motivated and dedicated scientists and to understand that a career in science today is not a life all spent in a laboratory but has the best business and job prospects the modern world can offer. Science today abounds both with noble causes and with glittering prizes. Reach out for them.
In doing all of this we also need to take on and defeat the vestiges of anti-science. This won't be done by lofty superiority but by engagement with the street, with science out there talking, debating, listening and educating.
Of course these debates aren't new.
In 1959, in Cambridge, C.P. Snow famously suggested that there exist in this country two separate cultures, all but unknown to each other, of the sciences and the arts. It was, he said, somehow culturally acceptable to be ignorant of the second law of thermodynamics in a way in which ignorance of Shakespeare was not.
Nearly half a century on, the sciences have become more specialised and popular understanding of its intricacies is, if anything, even worse. And yet the idea of the two cultures seems completely out-dated.
Science cannot any longer be detached from the society that houses it. Its influence is too pervasive for that. Every area of policy today has a scientific aspect. Think of the big questions of our time - climate change, the spread of infectious diseases, water supply, biodiversity, terrorism. We will need to consult the scientists over every one.
Think of how, over the last century, some of the following discoveries have transformed our lives. MRI scanning, developed in this very building; the contraceptive pill; modern infertility treatment; ultrasound scan for unborn babies; unlocking the double helix structure of DNA; keyhole surgery; placing fluoride in the water supply; the portable defibrillator; the Hepatitis B vaccine; strained quantum-well lasers which contain the information used in CDs, DVDs and the internet; DNA fingerprinting. A whole speech could be given that amounted to nothing more than a list of examples.
A generation or more ago, the study of science was accompanied by a sense of discovery. Man was landing on the moon; huge computers made thousands of calculations a second; the basic genetic code had been broken; major infectious diseases had been defeated through antibiotics and vaccination; Concorde was flying at twice the speed of sound and for the first time we could watch colour TV transmitted live from around the world.
But in fact, in the science of tomorrow we can glimpse a great future waiting to be born. Last week a document full of scientific insight, written, admittedly, by an economist, dominated the news. The Stern Report set out, unanswerably, the scientific case that our actions are changing our climate. It might have been a gloomy document. Actually, it wasn't - it was full of can-do optimism.
One of its implications was that if, as an idealistic young person, you wanted to change the world, then become a scientist. Politics will be necessary but insufficient. It won't be enough to negotiate and regulate. We will need a new generation's expertise in carbon capture and storage, nuclear fission and possibly fusion micro-generation, biomass, advanced battery technology, hydrogen use and fuel cells. Sensors and tracking technologies will fortify our defences against natural hazards and weather variations.
The science of climate change is the moon landing of our day. This is idealism in a technical language. The scientists and the idealists will, once again, be the same people. The discoveries in the laboratory will be matters of life and death. Nothing could be more vital, nothing could be more exciting.
The Government's Foresight programme which sets an agenda for future action on science is working out new strategies in flood and coastal defence, exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum; in cyber-trust and crime prevention, in addiction and drugs, the detection and identification of infectious disease, tackling obesity, sustainable management of energy and mental well-being.
Advances in the sorting of particles using lattices of light herald the advent of lab-on-a-chip technologies. These chips would support diabetes and cancer treatment and aid drug targeting.
In-situ diagnostics will permit us to arrest some diseases before clinical symptoms even appear. Much earlier diagnoses will be possible for diabetes, Alzheimer's, age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma and cataracts.
New sequences of genetic material can control vital aspects of cellular chemistry. DNA vaccines for AIDS, malaria, Hepatitis B and some cancers are now in clinical trials and could be available in five to ten years.
Advances in our understanding of brain functions will produce a better understanding of degenerative conditions such as dementia. It will enhance our understanding of the effects of recreational drugs and the propensity to addiction.
Information technologies will make a national infrastructure of identity possible, contributing to increased detection rates and reduced fraud. Secure technologies such as cryptography will protect data access and use.
Nanotechnologies will allow us to manipulate materials at a molecular level. Nano-sensors will increase our ability to monitor the conditions of buildings, to assess the cleanliness of food and water and the health of plants, human and animals.
Smart materials that will be able to indicate when they are in need of repair. Technology may even keep drivers in the right lane and at a safe distance from other vehicles.
I have remarked many times that change in the modern era is quicker than ever before. There is a greater economic premium on innovation than there has ever been. Hence, we need to nurture our capacity for ingenuity. And then we need to turn it to practical, often commercial use.
Britain's industrial hegemony in the 19th Century was made possible by the inventors of Lancashire: Arkwright's spinning jenny, Kay's flying shuttle, Crompton's spinning mule.
But, ever since the 1780s, the UK has been slow to turn its technological and scientific creativity to economic purpose. After World War One there was a big shift in the basis of production. Britain was at the forefront of the revolution in ingenuity. But we did not create the economic benefit. The same was true after the Second World War.
Our challenge is, this time, to couple science and economic purpose.
The science budget has more than doubled, from £1.3 billion to £3.5 billion in less than a decade. The number of science undergraduates in the UK has gone up by a quarter since 1997.
The research budget itself has doubled. We have invested £3bn since 1999 in the university science infrastructure. The Technology Strategy Board has supported over 500 collaborative R&D projects with £600 million of investment.
Expenditure on R&D has increased by more than 20% in real terms since 1997. But compared to our competitors it is still too low. We have an ambition to increase overall R&D from 1.9% of GDP, where it is now, to 2.5% by 2014.
We have been the first government to set out a long-term vision in science. The Ten-Year Science and Innovation Investment Framework set out our ambition to make the UK the premier destination for science and innovation.
The UK has a deserved reputation for scientific excellence: in seven of the ten major areas of research the UK lags behind only the US. We have more entries in the top 50 world universities than the rest of Europe put together. In bio-medical science we have 3 of the top 5 universities in the world. Our record for academic citations is very good.
Our biotechnology sector is the most mature in Europe. 450 businesses employ nearly 22,000 people and raise revenues of £2.6bn. Our pharmaceuticals industry has discovered and developed more leading medicines than the rest of Europe put together.
There are a number of reasons for this. We have a skilled workforce, a fair regulatory framework, generous tax relief on R&D, a good dialogue between government, universities and business and strong financial markets.
This is a winning combination. A good example is stem-cell research. The UK stem cell bank, the first of its type in the world, is responsible for storing, characterising and supplying stem-cell lines for research and, ultimately, for treatment. It is funded through the Research Councils, to the value of £2.6m.
In the 2005 budget, the Chancellor announced the establishment of the UK Stem-Cell Initiative. In December of that year it published 11 recommendations to Government, which were accepted in full. As a result, we have allocated an additional £50m, bringing our total investment up to £100m between 2006 and 2008.
But research capability can migrate quickly. The UK has a higher percentage of business R&D funded from abroad than any other nation in the G7. We are already very open. But the international competition is intense and getting more so.
Chinese R&D has been rising by 20% a year over the past five years. South Korean R&D has increased ten-fold since 1971. Indian R&D is even more astonishing - it has trebled in a decade. Indian engineers are flooding into the world's markets - 350,000 a year, forecast to 1.4m a year by 2015.
It is a warning to us that we have to remain world-leaders and that knowledge also needs to be transferred from the academy to the marketplace.
During the past three years alone, 25 spin-outs from UK universities were floated on the stock market with a combined value of over £1.5 billion. The Higher Education Innovation Fund provides £110 million a year to help universities put their research in front of business.
UK universities now produce roughly equivalent number of patents as their US counterparts. They also produce a far higher number of spin-outs per £1 million of research. Since 1997, the value of collaborative research between universities and business has increased by more than 50 per cent.
And 20 Knowledge Transfer Networks are being supported to bring together science and business communities.
When I spoke at the Royal Society in May 2002, I talked about the strength of our biotechnology industry and our plans for supporting the emerging nanotechnology industry.
I am glad to say that the UK biotechnology sector remains the most successful in Europe and is second globally only to the US. Just under a half of public biotechnology companies in Europe are in the UK. We have three times more than our nearest rival, Germany.
Now, the UK nanotechnology industry is also growing rapidly. In July 2003 we announced £90 million to support the creation, over six years, of a network of open access facilities to provide the essential 'tools of the trade', and a major programme of applied research. We also announced the formation of the Micro and Nanotechnology Network.
As a result the U.K.'s micro and nanotechnology industry has doubled in size from £11 billion in 2003-2004 to £23 billion for the financial year 2005-2006. Today it employs around 23,000 people supporting a further 225,000 who are employed in manufacturing sectors that depend on nanotechnology or microsystems.
Overall, the economic picture is encouraging. There are good signs of a new set of technology-based UK businesses and of inward investment by foreign firms attracted, at least in part, by the quality of UK science.
But the competition we face is intense. And we have weaknesses too. The UK has failed to develop any major new technology-based companies in the past decade; total venture capital investment in early stage technology companies is not increasing; business R&D is not rising as a share of GDP.
There is a message here too for the scientists - you need to think intellectually, but also commercially. There is still a significant cultural difference between the UK and the US. In the US, it is common for scientists to design a research programme specifically to answer the questions posed by businesses. In the UK that connection is usually made later in the process.
We need to push on with initiatives like Higher Education Innovation Fund and the Technology Strategy Board.
But we need to do much more. As part of our forward policy process the Government is considering how to use public procurement - after all public sector bodies spend around £150 billion per annum on procurement - to stimulate innovation and help small companies develop fast. We have concentrated on raising the level of innovation in manufacturing. We need to do the same today for services.
Last week, Alastair Darling announced the Global Science and Innovation Forum Strategy. The purpose of this is to make the UK the first choice for business investment in R&D, and for foreign universities and scientists.
We will be creating stronger international ties with China and India by extending our UK/US Science Bridges schemes to them. The first international UK Research Council office will open in Beijing next year.
And we areworking with the Royal Society to establish a new, high profile, prestigious international fellowship and alumni scheme to firmly establish the UK as "partner of choice" for scientific collaboration in the twenty first century.
So, the basis for world-class science is in place. The ideas are moving better and from the laboratory to the market place. The standard account of British scientific history is being confounded. But nothing in a modern economy is for ever. There are two things in particular that threaten the strong position we have attained.
The first is perhaps the most difficult issue of all. Government must show leadership and courage in standing up for science and rejecting an irrational public debate around it.
Imagine if the MRI scanner had been known by the name that is often used by researchers, the NMR imaging device: the nuclear magnetic resonance machine. It might well have been a different sort of debate altogether.
Yet in many instances, a powerful and vocal lobby, with access to all the media channels and an interest in polarising the argument, frames the debate.
Standing up to this is harder than it sounds. But it is a classic example of the struggle between short term politics and long term public good. If we hadn't taken on the animal rights extremists, we might well have lost essential scientific research to Britain with incalculable economic damage to the country to say nothing of the value of the research in the treatment of disease. But in a sense, that was an argument, because of the violence, we could easily enough win.
Harder are the genuine areas of intellectual controversy. We have only opened back up the nuclear power debate just in time. There is no way, frankly, that we can guarantee energy security or cleaner power without it. And at least on GM drugs, we remain strong.
But the misconceptions, often born of the most outrageous distortion of fact by campaigners, who in accusing others of a lack of scruple show precious little of it themselves, can be so pervasive. They so easily take hold.
Combating them takes the world of science to engage fully, clearly and in simple language with the world outside it. We need scientists willing and able to explain, to reason, to give the scientific facts not by arrogant assertion but by patience and also accurately reflecting where science is fact and where it is still conjecture. Britain as a whole must become a scientifically literate society. This is not simply to grow the next generation of scientists but also to condition all of us to a reasoned understanding of what science can do for us; to dispel the myths; calm the scares; let us make our moral judgements, at least partially, on the facts.
The anti-science brigade threatens our progress and our prosperity. We need political and science leadership that stands up to them.
BSE; GM foods; MMR; stem-cell - the variable experiences have given us a template of how to conduct a rational conversation about science. In government, we need to follow it and then trust to the good judgement of the public.
We need, first, to ensure we hear scientific truth told to power in government. Following the Phillips report into BSE in 2000, we appointed Chief Scientific Advisers in all major departments. We opened up scientific advisory committees to greater scrutiny. We created an independent Food Standards Agency to ensure we transfer the best scientific knowledge to matters of obvious sensitivity to the public.
Then, we need to engage the public at a very early stage. The reaction to stem-cell research gives us grounds for optimism. Unlike with GM foods, the public were engaged early enough and the argument has duly been conducted rationally.
We then need always to be clear about how the benefits accrue to individuals. The anti-GM lobby does not campaign against GM human insulin because the benefits to people with diabetes are obvious. The acceptability of stem cell research links to the fact that people can see how it would help treat illness.
But we must then be honest about the risks. We cannot claim that any new technology is "absolutely safe". It never is. The media may demand certainty. But science cannot provide it and we should not pretend it can. Also, we need to be sensitive to the fact that some risks, especially where children are involved, elicit more anxiety than others, irrespective of the scientific assessment.
When these conditions are in place, a genuinely open, rational dialogue is possible.
But, as I say, this is so much easier if science has a much broader reach into our culture and society. I have exhorted young people to be alive to the wonder of science. I have described the way that science will serve idealism for the next generation. We have a responsibility to make that possible by providing a first-class science education system.
The recruitment of teachers has been an undoubted problem. There is a shortage of maths and science teachers qualified in the specialism they teach. 26% of maintained 11-16 schools have no physics specialist and 12% no chemistry specialist. Nearly a quarter of those teaching maths were non-specialists. Only 19% of science teachers specialize in physics and they tend, as a rule, to have lower degree qualifications.
In 2004 the 10 Year Science and Innovation Investment Framework made science skills a priority. It included a range of new policies to stimulate the recruitment of science teachers. The Next Steps programme specifies targets for lessons to be taught by subject specialists.
There is already some progress. Science teacher vacancies are already falling. 7,500 new science teachers were hired in 2005 - 70% more than 1999/2000.
There has been a lot of publicity about the new Science GCSE. It has been developed with the support of many eminent scientists, including the Royal Society. Of course, students will continue to learn important scientific facts and knowledge. But they will do so in a way that also engages them through understanding scientific controversy. And by engaging more young people with science, it will encourage more to continue science at A level or through the new specialised Diplomas.
At the same time we are giving a new right to students who gain above average grades in the Key Stage 3 tests at age 14 to study triple science - physics, chemistry and biology individually. They will have that entitlement from 2008. We have also recently announced an £18m package to encourage more young people from the age of 9 to 21 to take an interest in science. The fund will be used to improve careers advice, offer a new interdisciplinary science degree combining core physics with applied science and to develop Saturday technology clubs.
So to summarise: this country is very well placed. We have, once again, rediscovered the secret of the first industrial revolution. We have brought scientific discovery and entrepreneurial activity together. We have inched towards a more rational public discourse about science and risk. And we are making progress on educating the next generation of scientists.
There is always more work for government to do. We need to concentrate on achieving the ambitious targets set out in our ten-year plan. We need to do more to foster links between universities and business. We can reduce the bureaucracy that universities face and enable our best universities to bid for the best of the world's scientific talent. We could do a lot more with government departments to use public procurement to pull through innovation.
But, finally, the thing that will link all of this together, and make Britain the most welcoming place for science in the world, is if we galvanise the young by proclaiming the great possibilities of science.
We need to make science popular again - to bring it back to people. We have seen recently some excellent popular books - Steve Jones, Richard Dawkins, Steven Hawking, Bill Bryson, whose A Short History Of Nearly Everything sold over two million copies and which was sent to every secondary school. The BBC and the Open University have some excellent science services. Google Earth is a wonder to behold.
In the 19th Century working civil engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel were national figures, not for writing about science but for what they achieved.
We need our scientists today to be as celebrated and famous as our sportsmen and women, our actors, our business entrepreneurs. Scientists are "stars" too.
This is Britain's path to the future, lit by the brilliant light of science.