Our new agency, with radical freedom to fund blue-sky innovation, is overdue. But its funding is still less than one per cent of UK R&D funding.
In order to remain world-leading in science, the PM’s former adviser explained, it is necessary to take risks and cut out bureaucracy.
The best way of thinking about it isn’t to fix one’s gaze on direct subsidies, but to look wider – at our failure to turn British ideas into British prosperity.
The Prime Minister is right to put research and development at the heart of his plan to build back.
The Government is proposing to plough £800 million into copying an idea the US abandoned decades ago. It won’t work.
Several new investment vehicles will put Theresa May’s belief in “the good that government can do” into action across multiple sectors.
The most successful ones will be those that maintain their partnerships in Europe, but also look farther afield to forge new associations across the globe.
If the head of one person is attached to the body of another, which of them survives – if either?
It has the freedom to make big bets on new firms and new technology, and can help regulators develop sensible rules for this vital sector.