Which is another way of saying that this list of reasons to visit the UK in 2012 is more eloquent and complete than even I could be!

Did you know that 90% of all scientists who have ever lived are alive and active today and that in the last 18 months more scientific data has been generated than ever before in history?  Astonishing, eh?  The main “take home” message from the recent IVA meeting was that currently Life Sciences are experiencing a welcome paradigm shift.  This is not just in terms of Life Sciences’ ability to provide better medical applications for humans but also in understanding the fundamental building blocks of all life on the planet essential for sustainable development and survival.

As if to underline the message about the importance of Life Sciences there was a welcome recent development in the UK – the long awaited opening of the UK Biobank. 500,000 human samples are now available to international researchers to access.  Sweden, the UK and the other Nordic countries have great developments in biobanking across the medical and environmental areas, and these facilities can be used in a variety of applications.  The NKS development and other facilities around Sweden will be key focal points for Sweden in the future.

So why is it important to understand life better?

Biologists are sometimes seen as little brothers to Physicists or Chemists but the reality is that increased knowledge in all disciplines can only benefit everyone.  The more we understand life, the more we are able to work with nature’s expertly designed systems instead of cutting across them.  Personalised medicine, algal biofuels, or organic plastics are all examples of such developments.  Two Swedish examples at the seminar were the identification of bacteria for artificial photosynthesis and yeasts which will be used in the production of diesel fuels.

The reality is that we will need all of science to make a contribution to a more sustainable world where people are living longer, whether this be through more accurate instrumentation, a better understanding of materials or chemicals, or indeed a more fine-tuned understanding of proteins and cells and how they behave.  Scientists truly deserve recognition for the way they are working, often quietly and diligently to this purpose.

So science can help us but it needs to work in tandem with politicians and civil society to come up with solutions.  We could all learn from the way that Swedish civil society truly engages in science, including that much appreciated briefing from IVA.  I can hardly wait until next year!

The Council of Europe and its key institutions and tools – the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention of Human Rights – have defended human rights and fundamental freedoms for over 60 years. They have helped to promote the rule of law in Europe, and transform the lives of many Europeans.  But the work is far from completed.

The UK was one of the original architects of the European Convention of Human Rights and is currently the Chair of the Council of Europe. We strongly believe in the role and values of the Council but do not think the institutions of the Council are strong enough to carry out their important responsibility.

The key challenge is the huge backlog of cases in the Court in Strasbourg. This now stands at over 150,000 with an average delay of 5 years. This means that significant, urgent cases – for example, those involving　individuals subject to unfair trial　or　denied free speech　– will continue to be delayed. The Court itself has started to reduce the backlog, but even with the proposed reforms, the Court would still have too many cases to process. The best way to fix this problem is to ensure that the Member States pull their weight.

So we propose that governments do more to implement the Convention themselves, at home, through introducing national human rights institutions, domestic legislation enshrining the Convention, and better human rights training for civil servants and judges. This would reduce pressure on the Court, as more cases would be dealt with at the national level.

One of reforms the UK is therefore proposing is the ability for the Court to say no to cases which have already been fairly decided by national courts in accordance with the Convention.

This would not reduce the right of individuals to apply to have their case heard in Strasbourg.  The Court would continue to decide these cases, and all Member States would continue to be held accountable.  This would give the Court a vital extra tool with which to focus its caseload on the most serious abuses.

We believe there is now momentum for reform. Sweden is an important and valued partner in this work.

The Court has already begun this work and our proposals build on the reform programme agreed by all 47 members in recent years. Transforming the Court to a modern and effective institution will not be an easy job but is necessary and urgent to ensure Europe continues to be active and effective in seeking to prevent human rights abuse.



The Prince expressed particular interest in a project which is being started in Sweden – The English Volunteering Project.

The project has been started by a British woman called Claire Thomas, who, after moving to Sweden because of her husband’s work, realised that it was very difficult for people who don’t speak Swedish to find volunteering opportunities. She felt this was not a good thing as volunteering is an excellent way to help people become part of a new society, make friends, learn Swedish and gain work experience. So, as she has a background of working with the voluntary sector in the United Kingdom, she decided to use her experience to set up a project aimed at making it easier for people to volunteer here.

Sweden has a volunteering centre called Volontärbyrån which has been supporting and encouraging volunteering throughout Sweden for 10 years. However, its services are only offered in Swedish. Claire is working with them to make what they do accessible to anyone who can speak English.

The English Volunteering Project aims to

• Adapt Volontärbyrån’s existing services (matching volunteers with non-profit organisations) so that they can be accessed by anyone who can speak English.
• Work with and support Swedish non-profit organisations to make what volunteer opportunities they can accessible to non-Swedish speakers.
• Make English speakers aware of the value of volunteering, the volunteer opportunities that are available to them, and to encourage and support them to volunteer.

The idea of the project has been received very positively by the international community in Stockholm, and Prince Charles indeed commented that it is ‘obviously a brilliant idea’. However, the project needs to raise around 80,000 kronor to pay for the changes that need to be made to the existing Volontärbyrån website, and this needs to be raised before July, or Volontärbyrån will cancel the project. All other work on the project can be done on a voluntary basis, but this minimum amount of money is required for the project to continue.

Claire is keen to talk to anyone who may be able to help support the project, including companies who use English as a working language or who have lots of English speaking employees. Her contact details are claire.thomas@volontarbyran.org or 0708 38 15 73.

It’s part of a week-long Nordic tour, embracing Norway and Denmark.

Here in Stockholm, they arrive on Thursday at lunchtime and are greeted at Arlanda by Prince Carl Philip. There they also meet Swedish air force personnel and inspect a Gripen plane, as well as meeting representatives of its maker, Saab, and of the UK company, Selex Galileo, which makes some of its high-tech equipment systems.

I see this engagement as an opportunity to thank Sweden for the important role it played in the NATO-led Libya operation and to mark UK-Sweden defence industrial co-operation.

Their Royal Highnesses, accompanied by the Queen and Prime Minister Reinfeldt, then visit Fryshuset, to meet and talk to young people and to the centre’s leaders about the great work it does in tackling gang violence and other social problems and in promoting integration, all themes close to the heart of the British and Swedish governments and Royal Families.

My wife and I are hosting a reception that evening, for the Prince and Duchess to meet members of the UK community in Sweden, particularly those involved in community service and volunteering, which are themes of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

On Friday, Queen Silvia and the Duchess visit the British International Primary School and a Swedish pre-school. The King and Prince Charles visit the Stockholm Resilience Centre, to discuss climate change and the challenges facing the planet, and then they go to St Erik’s housing development to see a leading example of community-centric urban architecture. Both of these themes, the global environment and the built environment, are of course dear to Prince Charles’ heart. As is renewable energy, and I will be hosting a meeting for him to meet leading Swedish players in the biomass sector.

On Saturday, Their Majesties accompany Their Royal Highnesses to the Vasa, without which no trip to Stockholm would be complete! There will be a brief walkabout near the Vasa Museum, around 11.00 on Saturday, which would be the best occasion to catch a glimpse of our Royal visitors. They complete their 48 hours in Sweden with a visit to Saltå Kvarn to see an organically based mill and bakery in operation.

The themes the visit covers reflect the challenges of modern societies – sustainable growth, energy and agriculture, education, international security and integration – that the UK and Sweden are tackling together.

Mainly because of security. Terrorism originating in or around Somalia threatens many European countries, including Sweden and the UK.   The London Conference aims to create new international consensus and energy on how to disrupt terrorism, including the movement of terrorists to and from Somalia, the flow of their finances, and delivering effective information gathering, investigation, detention and criminal prosecution.

There will be many other dimensions to the conference, with discussions on political, security and the humanitarian fronts.   The aims of the conference are wide ranging, given the need to step up efforts to tackle the root causes and effects of the problems faced by Somalia across the board.

Engagement in Somalia is important for both the UK and Sweden.  Both countries have large Somali diasporas and given Sweden’s experience and expertise on development and stabilisation, it will have an important role to play in the conference and its follow-up.



This week (6 February, in fact) marks an historic day for Britain. 60 years ago, a young Princess became Queen.

It was a Britain very different from today. Still a colonial power in much of the world. Still recovering from the horrors of the Second World War. There was one, black and white, TV channel.  Space travel was the stuff of comic books. Truman and Churchill presided in Washington and London. De Gaulle was in internal exile in France.

It’s extraordinary to think about how Britain and the world have changed since our Queen came to the Throne. This year she celebrates her Diamond Jubilee. Sixty years on the throne. An amazing achievement.

I had the privilege of meeting her almost exactly a year ago. She was as intelligent, engaged, interesting and interested as everyone who has met her says she is.  She is an amazing example of duty, discretion and devotion.

I was asked by a Swedish politician recently why Britain loved its monarchy so much. I said my own personal view was that it was partly that everyone loves a family story, with new generations sustaining interest.

Also that people respect the lifetime of service The Queen has given to Britain and the Commonwealth.

It’s also I think something romantic. In a world of business plans and business problems, of jargon and job cuts, there’s something attractive in an institution that represents different traditions and values.

But it’s an institution that exists by being close to people, which, day in day out, supports British business, communities, ideas and events.

Today, like every day, The Queen and her family will be out in the community, visiting schools, hospitals, factories, farms. Hundreds of visits, every year for sixty years.

May there be many more to come! God Save the Queen!

And I’ve been busy preparing for and hosting high level visits.  Our Minister for trade and investment, Lord Green, was here last week, promoting co-operation between the UK and Sweden, particularly in the field of smart grids.

He and I saw an Iphone app produced by a British company which showed in real time the electricity consumption in the CEO’s flat back in the UK.

The CEO could tell from the graph on the screen when his wife had boiled the kettle! All that is fun, but the real purpose is to enable consumers to make intelligent choices about when and how to use energy, saving bills and helping save the planet, too.

Talking of emergencies, when evacuating people in a crisis, the usual mantra is “women and young children first”.

This week my Prime Minister will be joining his Nordic and Baltic counterparts at a summit to put women and older people first.

Specifically, the Northern Future Forum in Stockholm on 8 and 9 February will consider how to unlock two under-exploited sources of economic growth:

-    encouraging more women into senior positions in businesss; and
-    encouraging older people to stay in the work force longer, increasing the output of the economy and reducing the pension burden.

The statistics are striking:  although women are over half the workforce in many countries, they are only a tenth of members of the boards of big companies and hold only a twentieth of the top executive jobs in such firms.

For the ageing workforce the change over the next three decades will be striking – in most European countries the number of over 65s as a proportion of total population will increase by around a third.

We all have a lot to learn from each other in these areas – how to get more women into business leadership (Lehman sisters, rather than Lehman brothers…) and how to make employment more feasible and attractive for older people.  You can follow the conference as it happens via the internet on www.sweden.gov.se/nff

For Britain, the EU remains key to our prosperity and security. Phrases like that can seem banal, the stuff of speeches and policy documents.

But the death this weekend of Vaclav Havel reminds us that for many tens of millions of Europeans that promise was denied them for half a century of Cold War Communism.

The bravery and vision of leaders, thinkers, writers and campaigners like him created the conditions for the reunification of Europe, surely one of the greatest positive changes in our lifetimes.

Britain wants a European Union that is faithful to the ideals of those who fought so hard for the changes that made its enlargement possible.  That means a Europe committed to further enlargement, and to robust and effective external action, in foreign, defence and security policy, in work on energy security and climate change and – not least – on human rights.

In all of this, Sweden is an absolutely key partner. We both agree on the need to ensure the Single Market works better, particularly for businesses. It is only by keeping our economies open, expanding our trade and making EU laws more business friendly that we can get the economic growth in Europe that we all want to see.

Britain is and will remain a great place to invest, with all the advantages of the Single Market, and with important national features on top of that:

-    one of the easiest places in the world to set up a business, according to the World Bank;

-    21 new enterprise zones around the country offering relief from business rates and taxes;

-    tax on business falling to 23% by 2014, one of the lowest rates in the G7; and

-    the great British heritage, culture and (most of the time) climate!

Like Sweden, we believe in a liberal, open, outward-facing Europe, which needs to be smart and competitive to thrive economically in the world we face today.

For that, we need to do everything we can to guard against a rigid, two-speed Europe. Countries large or small, inside or outside the single currency area, are equal partners in the EU.  Maintaining that balance and fairness will remain a priority for Britain.

Very best wishes to all readers of this blog for a peaceful and happy Christmas and all that you and your family would wish for in the New Year.

The other big event of the week here is of course Nobel Week, reaching its climax with the Prize Awards Ceremony on Saturday, to which I’m hugely looking forward.

It’s not of course disconnected from the problems of the economy, which I wrote about in DN.

The UK government sees science and innovation as drivers of economic growth.  On 8 December the UK published its Innovation & Research Strategy for Growth.  Despite the difficult economic climate the UK’s knowledge base remains the most productive in the G8.  Not only have we maintained the annual science budget at £4.6bn but we have invested an additional £495 million in capital projects, and we are focusing on improving incentives for SMEs to innovate.

The capital funding includes funding for graphene – the star of last year’s Nobel Awards – the strongest and thinnest material in the world and a game changer for computer processing power and lightweight materials.

It also includes funding for high performance computing to support industries such as automotive and aerospace.  We are also launching a series of technology and innovation centres under the name Catapult – facilities which will commercialise innovation and research in high value manufacturing, cell therapy, and offshore renewable energy.

We have been following Swedish developments, particularly the Swedish Innovation Strategy and the upcoming Swedish Research Bill, with interest.

And we have been working productively together this year at the EU level to ensure that the Horizon 2020 proposals for the EU’s future approach to science and innovation reflect our shared priorities.

We, like Sweden, continue to encourage more joint working between universities, the healthcare service and the pharmaceutical industry.

On 5 December, David Cameron announced £180 million to bring new drugs and medical technologies to market through a “biomedical Catalyst Fund” open to universities and SMEs.

Sweden and the UK are both strong in Medtech and in the biology that underpins drug discovery and combating infectious diseases as well as many other areas. Both countries want to see faster and higher quality commercialisation of new life saving techniques to patients.

So, as we congratulate the Nobel winners this week, we can be confident in  Sweden and the UK when it comes to renewed focus on innovation and growth. But we need to be innovative in our approach to innovation and keep pushing those boundaries!