Joined up business focussed offer
Research and innovation are affected by many different factors – from the availability of skills, datasets, buildings and laboratories, to regulation, tax and funding. The UK needs a combined offer to drive business investment in R&D.
Achieving the Government’s target to spend the equivalent of 2.4% of GDP on R&D by 2027 will require businesses to spend £17.4bn more on R&D in 2027 than they did in 2017. This private investment in R&D will benefit the investing firm, but will also have large spillover benefits to the wider economy.
To support and boost private investment in R&D, the UK needs to develop a combined offer, involving trade, education, health and funding would. This would appeal to businesses and motivate them to invest both time and money in research and innovation. Such an offer should seek to untangle the web of tax incentives, regulation and funding pots to make them easier for businesses to access.
A succession of reviews have considered and helped shape the R&D system that we have today. The challenge therefore is not to understand what initiatives are needed, but rather how the existing framework can be made to work better together to achieve the required scale and be more responsive to economic and societal changes.
We are working on a range of projects to further identify and develop the main facets of this offer to make the UK a more attractive place for R&D investment.
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