Show us the money

In what is a turbulent political time, CaSE has been working to support the cross-party desire to increase spending on research and development.

The Government’s Industrial Strategy, published in late 2017, stated the aim to facilitate UK growth by fostering innovation. One of the key policy ambitions of the Industrial Strategy is to increase UK expenditure on R&D to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. With a Government Spending Review on the horizon for 2019, which will set out the future spending envelope for different government bodies and departments, we believe this is the time for the Government to signal its intent to reach its target.

We have already been undertaking a substantial programme of work in this area over 2018 that will continue through the new year. This has included setting out the economic trajectory we believe is most appropriate in reaching 2.4% by 2027 and what will be required from who. We have been working closely with different arms of the government throughout, chiefly BEIS, UKRI and HM Treasury in supporting their work in developing policies to help enable the government to reach the target using both direct financial and non-financial policy levers. These departments have some of the largest roles to play in reaching the target, UKRI will be accountable for roughly 70% of public funding of R&D, but it alone cannot be wholly responsible for government expenditure on R&D.

The Industrial Strategy has a strong cross-government theme throughout and the success of the strategy will depend on departmental buy-in. Within government, competing priorities in times of austerity and cuts to departmental R&D budgets could threaten to derail the target before much progress has been made. A priority of ours will be setting out a compelling narrative for how research benefits the whole of the UK. Crafting this narrative will be central to making the case for increased R&D spending in the lead up to next year’s Spending Review. We will be drawing on our members to help us highlight how an increase in R&D expenditure now could be transformative for the government, help to meet the priorities of departments and ultimately drive economic growth improve the lives of people across the country. We will be publishing our work in the new year with our recommendations to government and working with our members & others in the sector to see them adopted.

James Tooze is Policy Officer at the Campaign for Science and Engineering