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George Osborne speech at Google Campus launch; ENGLAND: London:INT**BEWARE FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY**George Osborne MP (Chancellor) speech SOT- It’s a great pleasure to be here at the opening of the new Google Campus in Shoreditch, in the heart of Tech City. This is the result of two years of collaboration between Google and the British Government, and we salute the leadership, creativity and energy of everyone at Google for making this happen. Back in 2010, some members of my team travelled to Silicon Valley and met with Eric Schmidt, now executive chairman of Google, to tell him about the Tech City initiative that we were planning to launch. And from that initial conversation has grown this incredible new facility – the largest purpose built space for start-ups in the whole of Europe. The way that Google has engaged with the East London technology community, and designed this Campus to meet the needs of local entrepreneurs and tech companies, is absolutely exemplary. This partnership model is absolutely in line with our approach to Tech City as a whole. Philosophically, this Government doesn’t believe that you can click your fingers and create a technology cluster in a top down way. Wherever possible, our approach is to go with the grain of what’s already happening, and help good things to expand and grow. So when local entrepreneurs started saying to us “There’s something really special happening in East London, but we need Government to help shine a light on the cluster and bring new investment to the area� we responded to that request. And over the past 18 months, Tech City has gone from strength to strength. The number of digital and technology companies in the area has increased from around 200 in 2010 to over 700 today. And as you’d expect, the world’s leading technology companies and investors are flocking to the area – including Intel, Cisco, Amazon, Airbnb, Qualcomm, General Assembly and Vodafone. Of course, a sustainable tech clus...