A new House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report warns the Government that the UK’s failure to retain and scale its science and technology companies has now reached crisis point and is causing the UK economy to bleed out.
Without urgent and radical reform, the Government risks acting too late to fix long-standing failures to scale, to retain the economic benefits of R&D in the UK, and to seize the enormous opportunities for technological and economic growth that are currently slipping through its fingers.
The report, ‘Bleeding to Death: the science and technology growth emergency‘, calls for:
- Clearer leadership from the Prime Minister and Chancellor through a new National Council for Science, Technology and Growth which would coordinate efforts across government and broker compromises between departments.
- Reforms to counter-productive visa policies for global talent.
- Unlocking institutional investment: the Mansion House Reforms should go further and faster. Amongst other key recommendations, it says that the government should provide incentives for and track pension funds investing in UK science and technology companies.
- Reforms to public procurement, including a mandatory target for Departments to spend with innovative UK based SMEs, mirroring measures in the US.
- Consolidation and scaling of public investment bodies including Innovate UK, the British Business Bank (BBB), and the National Wealth Fund (NWF).
- Changes to career structure, pay and incentives to enable easier movement between academia, business and government.
- Risk appetite: Incentivise and protect sensible risk-taking to support domestic innovation in government investment and procurement, adopting a risk-on mindset
