Tony Blair, UK prime minister, will on Monday highlight his determination to promote Britain as a centre for life sciences, awarding more than £1bn to stem cell and other biotechnology research, under a three-year £10bn (€14.5bn) spending plan for science.

The decision to give controversial biotechnology research £1bn-plus of the science spending pot increasing the annual budget from £287m in this financial year to £381m by 2007-08 is part of a strategy to exploit the relatively favourable legal climate in Britain for such work.