The Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) has published it’s new report – Building on Scientific Strength: The Next Decade of R&D Investment, on how the Government can stimulate a rise in the UK’s research intensity.
The UK Government has committed to increasing the UK’s research intensity by around a half, from 1.7% of GDP to 2.4% GDP over ten years, to create a more scientifically-enabled economy, drive productivity across the UK and bring R&D investment in the UK closer in line with other leading scientific nations. Our model shows that the initial Government uplift to R&D investment of £7bn will need to treble over the next five year spending review period, requiring £20.2bn of additional public investment between 2020 and 2024 to stay on target. In our report we set out actions the Government should take on public R&D investment; creating an attractive environment for private R&D investment and actions needed on people and skills.
This is the culmination of our work over the past year and the recommendations are based on views gathered from our members through a series of roundtable events and one-to-one interviews from February 2018 to March 2019 held across the UK. Thank you very much to you and to all our members for your contribution to this important report, which will form the basis of our political engagement ahead of an expected spending review in the autumn.
The BBC has covered the main recommendations of our report in a news article: Ministers told back up science vision or risk UK stagnation.
Submitted on 29/05/2019
