PRIME Minister Tony Blair visited the UK's biggest science project for 30 years at Harwell last Thursday.

The Government has put more than £200m into building the giant Diamond Light Source at the Harwell Science and Business Campus, When it opens next year, it will employ 330 staff and attract several thousand scientists from UK universities and research labs.

The medical research charity, Wellcome Trust, has put another £35m into the machine, which is designed to produce X-rays 100 billion times brighter than a standard laboratory X-ray machine.

The machine, housed in an area the size of five football pitches, is a super microscope using an intensely focused light source.

Mr Blair said: "This new world-class facility shows the importance this country attaches to science and scientists.

"Our future prosperity rests more than ever before on the hard work and genius of our scientists and how we harness their research to deliver improvements in all our lives.

"This is exactly what Diamond Light Source will help us achieve in many fields, from developing new drugs to tackling climate change."

Scientists have reached the final milestone in development of the project.

The team at Harwell has succeeded in focusing the light source into an intensely powerful beam and delivering it to three experimental stations, where it can be used to study the structure of matter.

Chairman of the Diamond Users, Prof Trevor Rayment, said the £250m Diamond machine, which is the size of three football pitches, looked a bit like a doughnut or stadium.

He added: "Unlike Wembley, it was built on budget and on time - at about a third of the cost, and it's above specification.

"It's a lab where world-class scientists can carry out premier league science, and you can trust that we will."

Prof Rayment said the 'supermicroscope' - known as synchrotrons - would allow scientists to find new materials for environmentally friendly fuel sources, and look at the structure of everything from aeroplane turbines to new drugs for cancer or flu.

The first phase of the massive construction project is on schedule to finish in January.

Work started in 2002 and involved sinking 1,500 concrete piles 15m below the chalk to stabilise the huge doughnut-shaped machine.

The project employs 270 people and by the time it is working to full capacity in 2008, it will recruit another 80.

The team was congratulated by Mr Blair during his visit.

TONY Blair joined members of the Wantage Constituency Labour Party for their centenary celebrations.

Last Thursday night, he spoke to more than 80 members of the constituency party at Didcot Civic Hall.

Mr Blair also paid a surprise visit to a Women's Institute meeting at the hall.

The following night, the Leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, was the guest speaker at the constituency party's centenary celebration dinner at Stanford in the Vale village hall.

He told more than 100 guests that it was the rank and file members in the constituencies who made the difference between success and failure.