Following on from announcements made at the chancellor’s Autumn Statement earlier this month, the government has released its Science and Innovation Strategy – ‘Our plan for growth: science and innovation’ – addressing how to support infrastructure, business investment and talent for UK science and innovation, and how to maximise the benefits for the UK economy.
In its responses to the consultation process for the Strategy, the BioIndustry Association (BIA) made a number of recommendations which have been set out in the government’s strategy. These include:
An equitable division of funding between higher education and maintenance of world class labs versus large scale investments in major national and international projects.
Continued focused support for the 8 Great Technologies. On prioritising which areas to invest in, the strategy states that the 8 Great Technologies and the Industrial Strategy will continue to support UK growth ambitions.
A focus on big data, which will support technologies such as high-throughput genomics, alongside support for high value manufacturing and imaging technologies.
Continued investment in both ‘people and kit’, and recognition that revenue costs are a key factor in determining the affordability of projects or facilities. The capital roadmap has been selected according to the published criteria of affordability (including revenue costs), and there is a commitment to ‘give full consideration to [staffing and maintenance] requirements when the government takes a decision at the Spending Review next year’.
The BIA welcomes the confirmation in the strategy that the Precision Medicine Catapult will be established in 2015, and that the High Value Manufacturing Catapult will receive £60 million for outreach and technical support for SMEs and £28 million towards a National Formulation Centre to support manufacturing based growth.
The strategy reiterates many of the commitments set out in the Autumn Statement, including how long-term funding will be used to support key priorities and projects in UK science and innovation. £5.9 billion of capital will support UK scientific excellence until 2021, the most long-term commitment to science capital in decades. Of this, £2.9 billion will support large-scale investments including in big data and high-value manufacturing, plus a £900 million ‘capital agility fund’ to respond to major challenges as they emerge. The remaining £3 billion will go towards individual research projects and ensuring the UK has world-class labs.
Steve Bates, CEO of the BIA, commented: “Global leading UK science underpins our innovative life science economy. The UK truly has the potential to lead the world in twenty-first century healthcare with businesses based on the genomic revolution that’s delivering personalised medicine. In the Science and Innovation Strategy it’s great to see a long-term government plan setting out capital commitments which take into account several recommendations the BIA made on behalf of its membership and the wider life sciences sector, such as the equitable split in funding for higher education and maintaining the UK’s world class labs alongside large scale investments in major national and international projects.
“Alongside this investment in science we must ensure our nation has the entrepreneurial elan and bioscience-supportive stock market in the UK to translate scientific endeavour into commercial and economic success. It is good to see that the government recognises this link and the BIA will continue to advocate strongly for measures that support this such as continued funding for the Biomedical Catalyst programme.”