Within the final decade, the UK has had 4 considerably completely different units of know-how priorities, and a brief, however disruptive, interval, the place such prioritisation was opposed on precept. This 3500 phrase piece seems at this historical past of instability in UK innovation coverage, and suggests some rules of consistency and readability which could give us some extra stability within the decade to return. A PDF model might be downloaded right here.
Introduction
The issue of coverage churn has been recognized in quite a lot of coverage areas as a barrier to productiveness progress within the UK, and science and innovation coverage isn’t any exception to this. The UK can’t do all the things – it represents lower than 3% of the world’s R&D sources, so it must specialise. However current governments haven’t discovered it simple to resolve the place the UK ought to put its focus, after which persist with these selections.
In 2012 this the then Science Minister, David Willetts, launched an initiative which recognized 8 precedence applied sciences – the “Eight Nice Applied sciences”. Willetts mirrored on the destiny of this initiative in a very fascinating paper revealed final 12 months. In brief, whereas there was consensus on the necessity for the UK to focus (except one brief interval), the areas of focus have been topic to frequent change.
Substantial modifications in course for know-how coverage have occurred even if we’ve had a single political get together in energy since 2010, with explicit instability since 2015, within the interval of Conservative majority authorities. Since 2012, the typical life-span of an innovation coverage has been about 2.5 years. Beneath the headline modifications, it’s true that there have been some continuities. However given the lengthy time-scales wanted to ascertain analysis programmes and to hold them by means of to their outcomes, this instability makes it completely different to implement any sort of coherent technique.
Shifting Priorities: from “Eight Nice Applied sciences”, by means of “Seven Expertise Households”, to “5 Crucial Applied sciences”
Desk 1 summarises the varied precedence applied sciences recognized in authorities coverage since 2012, grouped in a approach which greatest brings out the continuities (click on to enlarge).
The “Eight Nice Applied sciences” had been launched in 2012 in a speech to the Royal Society by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne; a paper by David Willetts expanded on the rationale for the alternatives . The 2014 Science and Innovation Coverage endorsed the “Eight Nice Applied sciences”, with the addition of quantum know-how, which, following an in depth lobbying train, had been added to the listing within the 2013 Autumn Assertion.
2015 introduced a majority Conservative authorities, however continuity within the places of work of Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer didn’t translate into continuity in innovation coverage. The brand new Secretary of State within the Division of Enterprise, Innovation and Abilities was Sajid Javid, who delivered to the put up a Thatcherite mistrust of something that smacked of commercial technique. The primary sufferer of this world-view was the innovation company Innovate UK, which was subjected to vital cut-backs, inflicting lasting injury.
This interlude didn’t final very lengthy – after the Brexit referendum, David Cameron’s resignation and the premiership of Theresa Might, there was an elevated urge for food for intervention within the financial system, coupled with a rising consciousness and acknowledgement of the UK’s productiveness downside. Greg Clark (a former Science Minister) took over at a renamed and expanded Division of Enterprise, Power and Industrial Technique.
A White Paper outlining a “trendy industrial technique” was revealed in 2017. Though it nodded to the “Eight Nice Applied sciences”, the main focus shifted to 4 “missions”. Cash had already been put aside within the 2016 Autumn Assertion for an “Industrial Technique Problem Fund” which might assist R&D in assist of the priorities that emerged from the Industrial Technique.
2019 noticed one other change of Prime Minister – and one other election, which introduced one other Conservative authorities, with a a lot higher majority, and a fairly interventionist manifesto that promised substantial will increase in science funding, together with a brand new company modelled on the USA’s ARPA, and a promise to “focus our efforts on areas the place the UK can generate a commanding lead within the industries of the long run – life sciences, clear vitality, area, design, computing, robotics and synthetic intelligence.”
However the “trendy industrial technique” didn’t survive lengthy into the brand new administration. The brand new Secretary of State was Kwasi Kwarteng, from the wing of the get together with an ideological aversion to industrial technique. In 2021, the economic technique was outmoded by a Treasury doc, the Plan for Development, which, whereas putting sturdy emphasis on the significance of innovation, took a way more sector and know-how agnostic method to its assist. The Plan for Development was supported by a brand new Innovation Technique, revealed later in 2021. This did determine a brand new set of precedence applied sciences – “Seven Expertise Households”.
2022 was the 12 months of three Prime Ministers. Liz Truss’s hard-line free market place was actually unfriendly to the idea of commercial technique, however in her 44 day tenure as Prime Minister there was not sufficient time to make any vital modifications in course to innovation coverage.
Rishi Sunak’s Premiership introduced one other vital growth, within the type of a equipment of presidency change reflecting the brand new Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for know-how. A brand new division – the Division for Innovation, Science and Expertise – meant that there was now a cupboard stage Secretary of State centered on science. One other vital evolution within the profile of science and know-how in authorities was the growing prominence of nationwide safety as a driver of science coverage.
This had begun within the 2021 Built-in Evaluation , which was an try and set a single imaginative and prescient for the UK’s place on the planet, protecting safety, defence, growth and international coverage. This elevated “Sustaining strategic benefit by means of science and know-how” as certainly one of 4 overarching rules. The disruptions to worldwide provide chains throughout the covid pandemic, and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the next giant scale European land struggle, raised the problem of nationwide safety even greater up the political agenda.
A brand new division, and a modified set of priorities, produced a brand new 2023 technique – the Science & Expertise Framework – taking a programs method to UK science & know-how . This included a brand new set of know-how priorities – the “5 essential applied sciences”.
Thus in a single decade, we’ve had 4 considerably completely different units of know-how priorities, and a brief, however disruptive, interval, the place such prioritisation was opposed on precept.
Continuities and discontinuities
There are some continuities in substance in these know-how priorities. Quantum know-how appeared round 2013 as an addendum to the “Eight Nice Applied sciences”, and survives into the present “5 Crucial Applied sciences”. Problems with nationwide safety are an enormous driver right here, as they’re for a lot bigger scale programmes within the USA and China.
In a few different areas, title modifications conceal substantial continuity. What was known as artificial biology in 2012 is now encompassed within the subject of engineering biology. Synthetic Intelligence has come to excessive public prominence in the present day, however it’s a pure evolution of what was known as large information, pushed by technical advances in machine studying, extra pc energy, and larger information units.
Priorities in 2017 had been outlined as Grand Challenges, not Applied sciences. The language of challenges is taken up within the 2021 Innovation Technique, which proposes a collection of Innovation Missions, distinct from the precedence know-how households, to deal with main societal challenges, in areas akin to local weather change, public well being, and intractable ailments. The 2023 Science and Expertise Framework, nevertheless, describes investments in three of the 5 Crucial Applied sciences, engineering biology, synthetic intelligence, and quantum applied sciences, as “know-how missions”, which appears to make use of the time period in a considerably completely different sense. There may be room for extra readability about what is supposed by a grand problem, a mission, or a know-how, which I’ll return to under.
One other distinction that’s not all the time clear is between applied sciences and business sectors. Each the Coalition and the Might governments had industrial methods that explicitly singled out explicit sectors for assist, together with by means of assist for innovation. These are listed in desk 2. However it’s debatable that not less than two of the Eight Nice Applied sciences – agritech, and area & satellites – can be higher regarded as business sectors fairly than applied sciences.
Desk 2 – industrial technique sectors, as outlined by the Coalition, and the Might authorities.
The sector method did underpin main utilized public/non-public R&D programmes (such because the Aerospace Expertise Institute, and the Superior Propulsion Centre), and new R&D establishments, such because the Offshore Renewable Catapult Centre, designed to assist particular business sectors. In the meantime, underneath the banner of Life Sciences, there’s continued specific assist from the pharmaceutical and biotech business, although right here there’s a lack of readability about whether or not the first aim is to advertise the well being of residents by means of innovation assist to the well being and social care system, or to assist pharma and biotech as excessive worth, exporting, industrial sectors.
However two of the 2023 “5 essential applied sciences” – semiconductors and future telecoms – are considerably new. Once more, these look extra like industrial sectors than applied sciences, and whereas nobody can doubt their strategic significance within the international financial system it isn’t apparent that the UK has a very sturdy comparative benefit in them, both within the measurement of the prevailing enterprise base or the size of the UK market (see my earlier dialogue of the background to a UK Semiconductor Technique).
The story of the final ten years, then, is an absence of consistency, not simply within the priorities themselves, however within the conceptual foundation for making the prioritisation – whether or not challenges or missions, business sectors, or applied sciences.
From technique to implementation
How does one flip from technique to implementation: given a set of precedence sectors, what must occur to show these into analysis programmes, after which translate that analysis into industrial outcomes? An apparent level that nonetheless wants stressing, is that this course of has lengthy lead occasions, and this isn’t suitable with innovation methods which have a mean lifetime of two.5 years.
To cite the current Willetts evaluation of the enterprise case course of for scientific programmes: “One senior official estimated the time from an authentic thought, arising in Analysis Councils, to execution of a programme at over two and a half years with 13 particular approvals required.” It might clearly be fascinating to chop a number of the forms that causes such delays, however it’s hanging that the time taken to design and provoke a analysis programme is of the identical order as the typical lifetime of an innovation technique.
One information level right here is the destiny of the Industrial Technique Problem Fund. This was introduced within the 2016 Autumn Assertion, anticipating the 2017 Industrial Technique White Paper, and exists to assist translational analysis programmes in assist of that Industrial Technique. As we’ve got seen, this technique was de-emphasised in 2019, and formally scrapped in 2021. But the analysis programmes set as much as assist it are nonetheless going, with cash nonetheless within the finances to be spent in FY 24/25.
After all, a lot worthwhile analysis might be being finished in these programmes, so the cash isn’t wasted; the issue is that such orphan programmes could not have any follow-up, as new programmes on completely different subjects are designed to assist the newest technique to emerge from central authorities.
Typically the timescales are such that there isn’t even an opportunity to operationalise one technique earlier than one other one arrives. The most important public funder of R&D, UKRI, produced a 5 12 months technique in March 2022 , which was underpinned by the seven know-how households. To operationalise this technique, UKRI’s constituent analysis councils produced a set of supply plans . These had been revealed in September 2022, giving them a run of six months earlier than the arrival of the 2023 Science and Innovation Framework, with its new set of essential applied sciences.
A pure response of funding businesses to this instability can be to resolve themselves what greatest to do, after which do their greatest to retro-fit their ongoing programmes to new authorities methods as they emerge. However this is able to defeat the purpose of creating a method within the first place.
The subsequent ten years
How can we do higher over the subsequent decade? We have to deal with consistency and readability.
Consistency means having one technique that we persist with. If we’ve got this, traders can have faith within the UK, analysis establishments could make knowledgeable selections about their very own investments, and particular person researchers can plan their careers with extra confidence.
After all, the technique ought to evolve, as sudden developments in science and know-how seem, and because the exterior setting modifications. And it ought to construct on what has gone earlier than – for instance, there’s a lot of worth within the programs method of the 2023 Science and Innovation Framework.
There needs to be readability on the idea for prioritisation. I feel you will need to be a lot clearer about what we imply by Grand Challenges, Missions, Trade Sectors, and Applied sciences, and the way they differ from one another. With sharper definitions, we’d discover it simpler to ascertain clear standards for prioritisation.
For me, Grand Challenges set up the circumstances we’re working underneath. Some grand challenges may embrace:
- How one can transfer our vitality financial system to a zero-carbon foundation by 2050;
- How one can create an reasonably priced and humane well being and social care system for an ageing inhabitants;
- How one can restore productiveness progress to the UK financial system and scale back the UK’s regional disparities in financial efficiency;
- How one can preserve the UK protected and safe in an more and more unstable and hostile world.
One would hope that there was a large consensus in regards to the scale of those issues, although not everybody will agree, nor will it all the time be apparent, what one of the best ways of tackling them is.
Some may refer to those overarching points as missions, utilizing the time period popularised by Mariana Mazzacuto , however I would like to consult with a mission as one thing extra particular, with a way of timescale and a particular goal. The 1960’s Moonshot programme is commonly taken as an exemplar, although I feel the extra vital mission from that interval was to create the flexibility for the USA to land a half tonne payload wherever on the earth’s floor, with an accuracy of some hundred meters or higher.
The essential characteristic of a mission, then, is that it’s a focused program to attain a strategic aim of the state, that requires each the mixing and refinement of present applied sciences and the event of recent ones. Defining and prioritising missions requires working throughout the entire of presidency, to determine the issues that the state must be solved, and which are tractable sufficient given cheap know-how foresight to be value attempting, and prioritising them.
The important thing questions for a judging missions, then, are, how a lot does the federal government need this to occur, how possible is it given foreseeable know-how, how properly geared up is the UK to ship it given its industrial and analysis capabilities, and the way reasonably priced is it?
For supporting an business sector, although, the questions are completely different. Sector assist is a part of an lively industrial technique, and given the tendency of business sectors to cluster in area, this has a robust regional dimension. The targets of commercial technique are largely financial – to lift the financial productiveness of a area or the nation – so the standards for choosing sectors needs to be based mostly on their significance to the financial system when it comes to the fraction of GVA that they provide, and their potential to enhance productiveness.
Prior to now industrial technique has usually been pushed by the necessity to create jobs, however our present downside is productiveness, fairly than unemployment, so I feel the important thing standards for choosing sectors needs to be their potential to create extra worth by means of the applying of innovation and the event of expertise of their workforces.
Along with the financial dimension, there may additionally be a safety facet to the selection, if there’s a purpose to suppose that sustaining functionality in a specific sector is significant to nationwide safety. The 2021 nationalisation of the metal forging firm, Sheffield Forgemasters, to safe the aptitude to fabricate essential elements for the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet, would have been unthinkable a decade in the past.
Industrial technique could contain assist for innovation, for instance by means of collaborative programmes of pre-competitive analysis. But it surely must be broader than simply analysis and growth; it could contain growing establishments and programmes for innovation diffusion, the harnessing of public procurement, the event of specialist expertise provision, and at a regional stage, the supply of infrastructure.
Lastly, on what foundation ought to we select a know-how to deal with? By a know-how precedence, we consult with an rising functionality arising from new science, that could possibly be adopted by present business sectors, or might create new, disruptive sectors. Right here an understanding of the worldwide analysis panorama, and the UK’s a part of that, is an important start line. Even the most recent know-how, to be applied, will depend on present industrial functionality, so the form of the prevailing UK industrial base does must be taken account. Lastly, one shouldn’t underplay the significance of the imaginative and prescient of proficient and pushed people.
This isn’t to say that priorities for the entire of the science and innovation panorama must be outlined when it comes to challenges, missions, and business sectors.
A basic framework for expertise, finance, regulation, worldwide collaboration, and infrastructure – as set out by the current Science & Innovation Framework – must underlie extra particular prioritisation. Sustaining the well being of the essential disciplines is essential to offer resilience within the face of the unanticipated, and you will need to be open to new developments and keep agility in responding to them.
The place to begin for a science and innovation technique needs to be to grasp that, fairly often, science and innovation shouldn’t be the start line. Science coverage will not be the identical as industrial technique, despite the fact that it’s usually used as a (less expensive) substitute for it. For challenges and missions, defining the targets should come first; solely then can one resolve what advances in science and know-how are wanted to deliver these in attain. Likewise, in a profitable industrial technique, shut engagement with the prevailing capabilities of business and the calls for of the market are wanted to outline the areas of science and innovation that may assist the event of a specific business sector.
As I harassed in my earlier, complete, survey of the UK Analysis and Growth panorama, underlying any lasting technique must be a settled, long-term view of what sort of nation the UK aspires to be, what sort of financial system it ought to have, and the way it sees its place on the planet.