The shifting sands of UK Authorities expertise prioritisation – Tender Machines

Within the final decade, the UK has had 4 considerably completely different units of expertise priorities, and a brief, however disruptive, interval, the place such prioritisation was opposed on precept. This 3500 phrase piece appears 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 come back. A PDF model could be downloaded right here.

Introduction

The issue of coverage churn has been recognized in a variety of coverage areas as a barrier to productiveness development within the UK, and science and innovation coverage isn’t any exception to this. The UK can’t do the whole lot – it represents lower than 3% of the world’s R&D sources, so it must specialise. However latest 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 attention-grabbing paper revealed final yr. Briefly, whereas there was consensus on the necessity for the UK to focus (apart from one quick interval), the areas of focus have been topic to frequent change.

Substantial modifications in path for expertise coverage have occurred although we’ve had a single political get together in energy since 2010, with specific 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 to their outcomes, this instability makes it completely different to implement any type of coherent technique.

Shifting Priorities: from “Eight Nice Applied sciences”, by “Seven Know-how Households”, to “5 Crucial Applied sciences”

Desk 1 summarises the varied precedence applied sciences recognized in authorities coverage since 2012, grouped in a manner 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 expertise, which, following an in depth lobbying train, had been added to the checklist within the 2013 Autumn Assertion.

2015 introduced a majority Conservative authorities, however continuity within the workplaces 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 dropped at the submit a Thatcherite mistrust of something that smacked of business technique. The primary sufferer of this world-view was the innovation company Innovate UK, which was subjected to important 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 “fashionable industrial technique” was revealed in 2017. Though it nodded to the “Eight Nice Applied sciences”, the main target shifted to 4 “missions”. Cash had already been put aside within the 2016 Autumn Assertion for an “Industrial Technique Problem Fund” which might help R&D in help 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 better majority, and a relatively 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 longer term – life sciences, clear vitality, area, design, computing, robotics and synthetic intelligence.”

However the “fashionable 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 Progress, which, whereas putting sturdy emphasis on the significance of innovation, took a way more sector and expertise agnostic strategy to its help. The Plan for Progress was supported by a brand new Innovation Technique, revealed later in 2021. This did establish a brand new set of precedence applied sciences – “Seven Know-how Households”.

2022 was the yr of three Prime Ministers. Liz Truss’s hard-line free market place was definitely unfriendly to the idea of business technique, however in her 44 day tenure as Prime Minister there was not sufficient time to make any important modifications in path to innovation coverage.

Rishi Sunak’s Premiership introduced one other important growth, within the type of a equipment of presidency change reflecting the brand new Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for expertise. A brand new division – the Division for Innovation, Science and Know-how – meant that there was now a cupboard degree Secretary of State targeted on science. One other important evolution within the profile of science and expertise in authorities was the growing prominence of nationwide safety as a driver of science coverage.

This had begun within the 2021 Built-in Overview , which was an try and set a single imaginative and prescient for the UK’s place on this planet, overlaying safety, defence, growth and overseas coverage. This elevated “Sustaining strategic benefit by science and expertise” as one among 4 overarching rules. The disruptions to worldwide provide chains through the covid pandemic, and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the next giant scale European land conflict, raised the difficulty of nationwide safety even larger up the political agenda.

A brand new division, and a modified set of priorities, produced a brand new 2023 technique – the Science & Know-how Framework – taking a techniques strategy to UK science & expertise . This included a brand new set of expertise priorities – the “5 crucial applied sciences”.

Thus in a single decade, we’ve had 4 considerably completely different units of expertise 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 expertise priorities. Quantum expertise 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 a giant 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 area of engineering biology. Synthetic Intelligence has come to excessive public prominence right this moment, however it’s a pure evolution of what was known as massive knowledge, pushed by technical advances in machine studying, extra laptop energy, and larger knowledge 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 set of Innovation Missions, distinct from the precedence expertise households, to handle main societal challenges, in areas reminiscent of local weather change, public well being, and intractable ailments. The 2023 Science and Know-how Framework, nevertheless, describes investments in three of the 5 Crucial Applied sciences, engineering biology, synthetic intelligence, and quantum applied sciences, as “expertise 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 expertise, which I’ll return to beneath.

One other distinction that isn’t at all times clear is between applied sciences and trade sectors. Each the Coalition and the Might governments had industrial methods that explicitly singled out specific sectors for help, together with by help for innovation. These are listed in desk 2. However it’s controversial that not less than two of the Eight Nice Applied sciences – agritech, and area & satellites – can be higher regarded as trade sectors relatively than applied sciences.

Desk 2 – industrial technique sectors, as outlined by the Coalition, and the Might authorities.

The sector strategy did underpin main utilized public/personal R&D programmes (such because the Aerospace Know-how Institute, and the Superior Propulsion Centre), and new R&D establishments, such because the Offshore Renewable Catapult Centre, designed to help particular trade sectors. In the meantime, below the banner of Life Sciences, there may be continued express help from the pharmaceutical and biotech trade, although right here there’s a lack of readability about whether or not the first purpose is to advertise the well being of residents by innovation help to the well being and social care system, or to help pharma and biotech as excessive worth, exporting, industrial sectors.

However two of the 2023 “5 crucial 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 world financial system it isn’t apparent that the UK has a very sturdy comparative benefit in them, both within the measurement of the present enterprise base or the dimensions 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, trade 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 instances, and this isn’t suitable with innovation methods which have a median lifetime of two.5 years.

To cite the latest Willetts evaluation of the enterprise case course of for scientific programmes: “One senior official estimated the time from an unique thought, arising in Analysis Councils, to execution of a programme at over two and a half years with 13 particular approvals required.” It could clearly be fascinating to chop among the paperwork 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 knowledge 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 help translational analysis programmes in help of that Industrial Technique. As we have now seen, this technique was de-emphasised in 2019, and formally scrapped in 2021. But the analysis programmes set as much as help it are nonetheless going, with cash nonetheless within the finances to be spent in FY 24/25.

In fact, a lot worthwhile analysis might be being performed 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 matters are designed to help the most recent technique to emerge from central authorities.

Generally 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 yr technique in March 2022 , which was underpinned by the seven expertise 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 crucial applied sciences.

A pure response of funding companies 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 may defeat the purpose of creating a technique 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 have now this, traders can believe 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.

In fact, the technique ought to evolve, as surprising developments in science and expertise seem, and because the exterior setting modifications. And it ought to construct on what has gone earlier than – for instance, there may be a lot of worth within the techniques strategy of the 2023 Science and Innovation Framework.

There needs to be readability on the premise for prioritisation. I believe 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 situations we’re working below. Some grand challenges would possibly 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 development to the UK financial system and scale back the UK’s regional disparities in financial efficiency;
• How one can preserve the UK secure and safe in an more and more unstable and hostile world.

One would hope that there was a large consensus concerning the scale of those issues, although not everybody will agree, nor will it at all times be apparent, what one of the best ways of tackling them is.

Some would possibly refer to those overarching points as missions, utilizing the time period popularised by Mariana Mazzacuto , however I would favor to check with a mission as one thing extra particular, with a way of timescale and a particular goal. The 1960’s Moonshot programme is usually taken as an exemplar, although I believe the extra important mission from that interval was to create the power 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 realize a strategic purpose of the state, that requires each the mixing and refinement of present applied sciences and the event of latest ones. Defining and prioritising missions requires working throughout the entire of presidency, to establish the issues that the state must be solved, and which can be tractable sufficient given cheap expertise foresight to be price making an attempt, 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 expertise, 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 trade sector, although, the questions are completely different. Sector help is a part of an energetic industrial technique, and given the tendency of trade sectors to cluster in area, this has a powerful regional dimension. The targets of business technique are largely financial – to lift the financial productiveness of a area or the nation – so the factors 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.

Previously industrial technique has typically been pushed by the necessity to create jobs, however our present downside is productiveness, relatively than unemployment, so I believe the important thing standards for choosing sectors needs to be their potential to create extra worth by the appliance of innovation and the event of abilities of their workforces.

Along with the financial dimension, there may be a safety side to the selection, if there’s a motive to suppose that sustaining functionality in a selected sector is significant to nationwide safety. The 2021 nationalisation of the metal forging firm, Sheffield Forgemasters, to safe the aptitude to fabricate crucial parts for the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet, would have been unthinkable a decade in the past.

Industrial technique could contain help for innovation, for instance by collaborative programmes of pre-competitive analysis. However it must be broader than simply analysis and growth; it could contain creating establishments and programmes for innovation diffusion, the harnessing of public procurement, the event of specialist abilities provision, and at a regional degree, the availability of infrastructure.

Lastly, on what foundation ought to we select a expertise to deal with? By a expertise precedence, we check with an rising functionality arising from new science, that may very well be adopted by present trade 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 latest expertise, to be carried out, will depend on present industrial functionality, so the form of the present UK industrial base does have to 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 have to be outlined when it comes to challenges, missions, and trade sectors.
A normal framework for abilities, finance, regulation, worldwide collaboration, and infrastructure – as set out by the latest Science & Innovation Framework – must underlie extra particular prioritisation. Sustaining the well being of the fundamental 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 start line for a science and innovation technique needs to be to understand that, fairly often, science and innovation shouldn’t be the start line. Science coverage just isn’t the identical as industrial technique, although it’s typically 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 expertise are wanted to carry these in attain. Likewise, in a profitable industrial technique, shut engagement with the present capabilities of trade and the calls for of the market are wanted to outline the areas of science and innovation that may help the event of a selected trade 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 this planet.