Richard Tice has criticised the Government following new plans for the UK to rejoin Horizon Europe.
Speaking on Britain’s Newsroom, the leader of the Reform Party slammed the move to rejoin the EU's funding programme for research and innovation.
Tice said: “It’s this massive funding program, £95 billion between 2021 and 2027 that funds, amongst many other things, scientific research program, including the EU defence fund. And this is what most people don't know.
“And the whole of this Horizon program is about funding the political aims and ambitions of the EU with its failing low growth, high tax, high regulation model. We should be nowhere near it. Michelle Donelan this morning has admitted that we will be putting a lot more money, millions more in than we get out. Why are we doing this? We left the EU not to fund this stuff.”
Richard continued: “We're putting in about £2billion a year. We'll be lucky if we get out a billion a year. They had an alternative called the Pioneer Program, which would have been equally funded. So the scientists would have gotten more in that and we could have had more collaborations globally.
“We're on the global stage. We've got to stop thinking small, insular, bungling, bureaucratic Brussels. We don't need them. We need to think global. Look, think about the AUKUS program. This is the sort of positive, dynamic stuff we should be focusing on. These are the great global opportunities, right? The big trade deal in Asia. That's another opportunity. That's what the scientists and the researchers should be focusing on.”
Watch the discussion in full above.
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