Could the increased public spend on science be swept aside?

Theresa May made much of her ambition to make the UK a global leader in research and innovation in the months leading up to the General Election. Will her commitment to science be swept aside with so many other manifesto commitments under a weakened leadership – or will it be her legacy?

In the 2015 General Election campaign, it was considered radical to push the Government to increase investment in research in line with inflation. Bruised by years of ‘flat cash’ and the devastating cuts to science capital that came with 2010 austerity, it was considered unseemly to be anything but grateful that the science budget had stood still.

So the outstanding feature of the 2017 General Election for research has to be the widespread commitment to eye-watering increases in investment in research and development (R&D). The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats all made manifesto commitments of the order of doubling UK expenditure on R&D: Labour to 3% of GDP by 2030, the Lib Dems ‘doubling in the long term’, and the Conservatives to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 with a long-term aim to reach 3%. The figure currently stands at 1.68% of GDP.

Spend on R&D is typically made up of a third from the public purse and two-thirds from business and charities. Assuming that remains the same, the Conservative commitment is equivalent to doubling the science budget – adding an additional £4bn to annual public spend on R&D, on top of the £2bn announced at the Autumn Statement. For illustration, this dwarfs the €1.5bn a year on average the UK receives from the EU for R&D.

A manifesto commitment is significant, but the Conservatives’ weakened position has already seen many flagship commitments swept aside. It would be easy for this manifesto commitment to go the way of foxhunting and grammar schools with barely a murmur. Will the Government stick with it? The political logic for backing this uplift in research funding is strong. Economists are clear that the universal drivers of productivity are capital and R&D. And there is now explicit cross-party support, meaning that this could be a transformative agenda that actually builds unity. And if they do, the Government’s commitment is, of course, not one it can deliver alone.

The target of 2.4% of GDP requires the private sector to stump up two-thirds, a cool £32bn in today’s money and £10bn more than they currently invest. Business will expect government to lead the way with investment in a true partnership. And activities across government will need to work together to deliver this commitment, not least immigration policy, and the post-Brexit trade and regulatory environment.

Author: Dr Sarah Main is Executive Director at CaSE, the Campaign for Science and Engineering.

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