The Prime Minister’s office asserts control over UK science policy

The Daily Telegraph published a significant article from the Prime Minister about science and technology this morning, to accompany a government announcement “Prime Minister sets out plans to realise and maximise the opportunities of scientific and technological breakthroughs”.

Here are a few key points I’ve taken away from these pieces.

1. There’s a reassertion in the PM’s article of the ambition to raise government spending on science from its current value of £14.9 billion to a new target of £22 bn (though no date is attached to this target), together with recognition that this needs to lever in substantially more private sector R&D spending to meet the overall target of the goal of total R&D spending – public and private – of 2.4% of GDP. The £22bn spending goal was promised in the March 2020 budget, but had since disappeared from HMT documents.

2. But there’s a strong signal that this spending will be directed to support state priorities: “It is also the moment to abandon any notion that Government can be strategically indifferent”.

3. A new committee, chaired by the Prime Minister, will be set up – the National Science and Technology Council. This will establish those state priorities: “signalling the challenges – perhaps even to specify the breakthroughs required”. This could be something like the ministerial committee recommended in the Nurse Review, which it was proposed would coordinate the government’s response to science and technology challenges right across government.

4. There is an expanded role for the Government Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, as National Technology Advisor, in effect leading the National Science and Technology Council.

5. A new Office for Science and Technology Strategy is established to support the NSTC. This is based in the Cabinet Office – emphasising its whole-of-government remit. Presumably this supersedes, and/or incorporates, the existing Government Office of Science, which is now based in BEIS.

6. There is a welcome recognition of some of the current weaknesses of the UK’s science and innovation – the article talks about “restoring Britain’s status as a science superpower” (my emphasis), after decades of failure to invest, both by the state and by British industry: “this country has failed for decades to invest enough in scientific research, and that strategic error has been compounded by the decisions of the UK private sector”. The article highlights the UK’s loss of capacity in areas like vaccine manufacture and telecoms.

7. The role of the new funding agency ARIA is defined as looking for “Unknown unknowns”, while NSTC sets out priorities supporting missions like net zero, cyber threats and medical issues like dementia. There is no mention of the UK’s current main funder of upstream research – UKRI – but presumably its role is to direct the more upstream science base to support the missions as defined by NSTC.

8. The role of science and technology in creating economic growth remains important, with an emphasis on scientifically led start-ups and scale-ups, and a reference to “Levelling up” by spreading technology led economic growth outside the Golden Triangle to the whole country.

As always, the effectiveness with which a reorganised structure delivers meaningful results will depend on funding decisions made in the Autumn’s spending review – and thus the degree to which HM Treasury is convinced by the arguments of the NSTC, or compelled by the PM to accept them.