Petition Site the Alan Turing institute where it can do the most good.

High tech research institutes are nucleation points for new high tech businesses and have a large influence on the surrounding economy. Currently the large research institutes are heavily concentrated in the south east, such as the Rutherford Appleton Labs at Oxford, the Sanger Institute and EBI outstation just outside Cambridge and the National Institute for Medical Research in London.

Funding research institutes is an excellent way for the government to get a good economic return on public money and to pump-prime the technology economy. As there is a severe lack of research institutes and the high value businesses they incubate in the north, the government should ensure that the proposed Alan Turing institute is located outside the usual Oxford, Cambridge, London triangle. If the economy is to be rebalanced geographically a high technology research institute will do more than any number of HS2 lines, which will only serve to push the London commuter belt further out.