Labour decision jeopardising UK bid to be a science superpower - Angus Robertson

Emerging technologies will be key in fields such as robotics and artificial intelligence

It is part of a wider drive for Edinburgh to be world-leading in emerging technologies, associated academic excellence and top level skills, jobs and investment.

The Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal has been aimed at creating 21,000 jobs by maximising the economic benefits from new technologies and data driven innovation. This is creating cutting-edge data facilities for artificial intelligence, robotics, and improving health and social care.

Sadly the new UK Labour Government is fundamentally undermining the process by cutting £800 million of spending destined for the University of Edinburgh. The scale of the hit is hard to fully comprehend. Losing £800m is a massive blow. It means that the ground-breaking exascale supercomputer destined for Edinburgh University will not go ahead as planned.

The computer – which would have been one of only a handful of its kind in the world – was set to be funded by the UK department of Science, Innovation and Technology through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). It would have been managed by the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) based at the University of Edinburgh.

Exascale would have been housed in a new £31m wing of EPCC’s Advanced Computing Facility and would have meant Edinburgh would have been one of the few places in Europe able to host a computer of such enormous scale.

Able to perform one billion billion calculations each second it would have provided high-performance computing capability for key research and industry projects across the UK. Exascale is aimed at helping researchers model all aspects of the world, test scientific theories and improve products and services in areas such as artificial intelligence, drug discovery, climate change, astrophysics and advanced engineering. It will simply not be possible for the UK to be a science superpower without such a supercomputer.

As we proceed through the fourth industrial revolution and next stage of the digital age the emerging technologies will be key in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the internet of things, the industrial internet of things, decentralised consensus, fifth-generation wireless technologies, 3D printing, fully autonomous vehicles and much besides.

It is terrible news that UK Labour is cutting a project for Edinburgh worth nearly £1 billion which would have put the capital in a leading international position. It is absolutely shocking, shortsighted and damaging to Edinburgh and Scotland’s economy, education and tech sector as well as any ambitions for the UK to be international leaders where supercomputing is required.

I will be seeking the earliest possible meeting with First Minister John Swinney and Cabinet Secretary for the Economy Kate Forbes to discuss this damaging decision for Edinburgh by the new UK Labour Government and seek the earliest possible u-turn.

The University of Edinburgh has built a world class reputation and was set to drive forward the plans to become Europe’s leading Data Capital and a centre for research, development and innovation. They have already shown they are best placed to host the exascale supercomputer. Labour should reconsider their ill-considered cuts.

Angus Robertson is Constitution, External Affairs and Culture Secretary