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Let’s have the benefit of top medical research and community housing
• READING reports of root-and-branch opposition, and your letters (including from my friend Councillor Roger Robinson) you would think the Prime Minister and the Labour government had handed over the British Library site to an evil conspiracy of private sector speculators, aiming at making vast profits.
In fact, of course, the government has backed the sale of the site to completely altruistic, not-for-profit, medical research organisations. These are the Medical Research Council itself, who want to move their existing facilities closer to the world-class hospitals and universities in the area; Cancer Research UK, whose existing labs in Lincoln’s Inn Fields would be moved in; the Wellcome Trust, Britain’s largest charity devoted to medical research; and University College London, one of Britain’s and the world’s finest research universities.
The sole aim of these bodies is to find treatments and cures for disease, including cancer, diabetes, influenza, HIV-Aids, and other killers.
The need to be close to hospitals where real patients have these illnesses is vital, for effective “translational” research.
On local safety and scientific benefit I would back the judgments of people like Nobel prize-winner Professor Sir Paul Nurse, in charge of planning, against the armchair scientists of the vocal but ill-informed opposition campaign. Yes, the site was hoped to provide much-needed social housing.
This could still be obtained through a section 106 agreement, especially since the MRC already owns the National Temperance Hospital site in Hampstead Road, where housing could be built. Camden’s development control committee has it in its power to demand such an outcome, whereby people get the benefit of the world’s best medical research, and the housing and community facilities we need.
I write as a resident of St Pancras and Somers Town ward, a lifelong socialist and believer in the NHS, and a former Labour councillor.
Now the government decision on sale of the site has been made, I hope we can concentrate on getting both the maximum social housing nearby, and a world-class medical research facility.
PETER BRAYSHAW
Plender Street, NW1
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