Trade tour PM nets £10m boost for cutting edge sciences

A HI-TECH digital autopsy unit is to be developed at a city mortuary in Yorkshire as part of a £10m foreign investment package announced by the Prime Minister.

David Cameron, on a trade tour of South East Asia, said the investment by Malaysian firm InfoValley at Bradford Public Mortuary will “create vital new jobs” in the city and show Britain is now one of the world’s leading locations for developing new life sciences technologies.

“InfoValley’s decision to expand its research and development work in the UK shows that we are the number one location in Europe for life science creativity,” the Prime Minister said. “And it reflects our efforts to help businesses to drive innovation through to commercial success. Their new digital autopsy facility in Bradford will create vital new jobs in the city, and developing this new technology in the UK could mean many more job opportunities for highly-skilled workers in the future.”

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Gerry Sutcliffe, Labour’s MP for Bradford South, said: “We welcome investment in the city wherever it comes from. But in addition to this, we don’t want to lose our forensic science department and I hope this isn’t to replace the outstanding forensic laboratories we have in the UK.”

Mr Cameron is the first British leader to visit Malaysia in almost 20 years, and used his trip to announce a new deal to double bilateral trade between the countries to £8bn by 2016.

The InfoValley investments was one of a number of specific announcements, with new investments totalling £220m announced by two national leaders.

UK Trade Minister Lord Green said: “Malaysia is a rapidly-developing country with stable growth rates and a fast-growing middle class, (and) will become ever more important to us in the future.”

UK exports to Malaysia in 2011 totalled £1.46bn.