The Government’s new Science and Innovation Strategy has received praise from the Royal Academy of Engineering, which said that it is “a step in the right direction towards providing a clear and long-term framework for research and innovation in the UK”.
The Government said that it intends to spend £6 billion building and updating research facilities over the next five years.
Nearly all of the significant beneficiaries have already been announced, including the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope, the Polar Research Ship (pictured), the Sir Henry Royce Institute for advanced materials in Manchester and a centre for ageing research in Newcastle.
In fact, the only commitment not announced previously is a contribution of £30 million to the Hamburg-based European XFEL — an international project that will use X-rays to map the structures of viruses down to an atomic level when it starts work in 2018.
Sarah Main, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said: “I was hoping for a visionary 10-year strategy with the authority and support of all Government. This strategy is reassuring, but it falls short on a number of specific commitments — such as ringfencing the science budget.”
A meeting of the House of Commons Business Committee in early December said that the Government should commit to a target of 3% of GDP being spent on R&D by 2020 — a target not included in the strategy. Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, criticised this omission. “We are behind our competitor countries at present, and we risk falling further behind.”
However, Professor Dame Ann Dowling, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said the Science and Innovation Strategy shows that the Government “understands the importance of long-term thinking to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of research and innovation.
The UK has world-class universities, an extraordinary history of invention and innovation and many outstanding science- and engineering-based companies.
In this increasingly competitive international environment, the Government has a crucial role to play in creating a policy environment that gives industry and others the confidence to invest and enables the UK to attract and retain the most talented researchers and innovators.
“We need to build strong connections between the Science and Innovation Strategy and the Industrial Strategy. This will also require investment and initiatives to tackle the engineering skills crisis.”