Science and Research

30 September 2021

Becoming a science superpower: setting a trajectory to £22bn by 2024/25 

The Government has rightly identified the UK’s R&D strengths as a good investment and a major competitive advantage internationally – promising to increase its spending on science to £22 billion per year by 2024/25. Our proposal to build that additional investment in a consistent and predictable way will leverage significantly more private investment and faster – every pound of public investment in R&D stimulates between £1.96 and £2.34 of private money.

Supporting future breakthroughs and improved resilience for the UK: the importance of ‘QR’ funding

Quality Related or ‘QR’ funding is low-bureaucracy, agile funding stream used by the best universities to commit to longer term challenges or deal with new and emerging issues. For example, the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was built on the back of long-term research started in 2005, when the University used QR funding to help establish the Jenner Institute after identifying pandemics as a future threat. We recommend Government safeguards the UK’s future resilience, agility and prosperity by increasing QR funding - and equivalents in the devolved nations-  by 20%. 

Horizon Europe: maintaining UK leadership in global R&D collaboration   

Horizon Europe gives UK universities and businesses the ability collaborate across Europe, lead projects, generate high-impact outputs and realise a range of economic, health, environmental and social benefits for the UK and its citizens. Our proposal is to maximise the benefits of those collaborations by ringfencing sufficient funding for the full duration of the programme.   

Related case studies

Supporting joint ventures with business

Queen's University Belfast has invested QR funding in developing technologies to support today's bus industry.

Read more >

Novel technologies to develop clean fuel and low-carbon energy

Spin-out company Oxford Catalysts Group is now selling new technology for generating clean fuels based on research into catalysts at the University of Oxford.

Read more >