Greg Clark is Chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee, was recently Secretary of State for Levelling Up, and is MP for Tunbridge Wells.
In 2020, UK research that led the world provided our way out of lockdown. The creation of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was an extraordinary medical and scientific achievement. But it is also a clear example of the positive impact that public investment in research and development can have on the UK economy.
By allowing us to open up safely, the vaccine not only saved lives: it saved businesses, jobs and billions of pounds of extra public spending that otherwise would have been required to continue furlough and other schemes that were keeping the economy afloat.
This breakthrough did not happen by accident. Kate Bingham has described in her account of the vaccine taskforce,The Long Shot, how it came out of a sustained commitment to UK science by successive governments and investment by a Conservative administration that put R&D at the heart of its agenda.
That commitment to becoming a more knowledge-intensive economy was entrenched last year by Rishi Sunak when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he set out plans to drive up both public and private sector investment in science: investing £22 billion by 2025 and reaching the OECD average of 2.4 per cent of GDP devoted to research and development by 2027.
It was the right choice. There is no path to future prosperity that involves the UK becoming less knowledge-intensive. By contrast, when you invest in R&D, you lay down a path to high-skilled jobs, export opportunities, and wealth creation – as well as the transformations in the way we can live our lives.
Not everything in the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini budget should be junked. The proposal to allow more investment from pension funds in businesses engaged in developing and applying new technologies has the potential to make a big difference.
However, reforms like these need to be delivered while keeping faith with commitments that were made for the long term that were designed to attract global investors to invest alongside such UK universities and research institutions as the Jenner Institute at Oxford.
Just as the money markets expect to be able to see a coherent plan for managing the public finances, investors in science and technology need to be able to rely on the assurance that the UK’s world-class scientific institutions that they come here to be close to will be sustained, and that we will not fall behind nations such as the US, Israel, Germany and South Korea in our investment to science.
And it is an investment. We have seen that with the Covid vaccine. We see it with new cancer drugs. We see it in advanced materials making cars and aeroplanes more efficient. We see it in technologies that will help our energy resilience and reduce the costs of power. We see it in our fantastic creative and cultural sectors: they make the UK a place that the world regards as one of the most stimulating places on earth to be.
So I hope that tomorrow the Chancellor will help us not only to travel safely through the turbulent conditions we face, but to ensure that we establish the basis of our recovery as nation that turns one of its greatest strengths – our outstanding record as a scientific powerhouse – into jobs, incomes and wealth for years to come.
Greg Clark is Chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee, was recently Secretary of State for Levelling Up, and is MP for Tunbridge Wells.
In 2020, UK research that led the world provided our way out of lockdown. The creation of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was an extraordinary medical and scientific achievement. But it is also a clear example of the positive impact that public investment in research and development can have on the UK economy.
By allowing us to open up safely, the vaccine not only saved lives: it saved businesses, jobs and billions of pounds of extra public spending that otherwise would have been required to continue furlough and other schemes that were keeping the economy afloat.
This breakthrough did not happen by accident. Kate Bingham has described in her account of the vaccine taskforce,The Long Shot, how it came out of a sustained commitment to UK science by successive governments and investment by a Conservative administration that put R&D at the heart of its agenda.
That commitment to becoming a more knowledge-intensive economy was entrenched last year by Rishi Sunak when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he set out plans to drive up both public and private sector investment in science: investing £22 billion by 2025 and reaching the OECD average of 2.4 per cent of GDP devoted to research and development by 2027.
It was the right choice. There is no path to future prosperity that involves the UK becoming less knowledge-intensive. By contrast, when you invest in R&D, you lay down a path to high-skilled jobs, export opportunities, and wealth creation – as well as the transformations in the way we can live our lives.
Not everything in the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini budget should be junked. The proposal to allow more investment from pension funds in businesses engaged in developing and applying new technologies has the potential to make a big difference.
However, reforms like these need to be delivered while keeping faith with commitments that were made for the long term that were designed to attract global investors to invest alongside such UK universities and research institutions as the Jenner Institute at Oxford.
Just as the money markets expect to be able to see a coherent plan for managing the public finances, investors in science and technology need to be able to rely on the assurance that the UK’s world-class scientific institutions that they come here to be close to will be sustained, and that we will not fall behind nations such as the US, Israel, Germany and South Korea in our investment to science.
And it is an investment. We have seen that with the Covid vaccine. We see it with new cancer drugs. We see it in advanced materials making cars and aeroplanes more efficient. We see it in technologies that will help our energy resilience and reduce the costs of power. We see it in our fantastic creative and cultural sectors: they make the UK a place that the world regards as one of the most stimulating places on earth to be.
So I hope that tomorrow the Chancellor will help us not only to travel safely through the turbulent conditions we face, but to ensure that we establish the basis of our recovery as nation that turns one of its greatest strengths – our outstanding record as a scientific powerhouse – into jobs, incomes and wealth for years to come.