Reimagining R&D: What future does the sector want for UK R&D?

The vision emphasises inclusive growth and equitable access to innovation. However, economic pressures and fiscal constraints may mean the UK Government prioritises high-growth sectors and productivity gains over broader societal benefits. This risks concentrating R&D investment in already strong regions, sectors, or businesses, potentially worsening inequality.

Economic stagnation and pressure on public finances may push a future UK government to increasingly fund mission-driven or applied research at the expense of non-targeted discovery research. This could deprioritise curiosity-driven research, whose benefits are often long-term and uncertain, or sideline valuable and necessary disciplines such as the social sciences, humanities and the arts, whose intangible benefits can be more complex to understand and measure. This could in turn lead to contraction of certain organisation types, fields and disciplines, ultimately leading to reduced capacity or capability in the R&D system. In our report, Mission Critical R&D, CaSE called for supporting a breadth of R&D disciplines and ensuring a balance between applied and non-targeted discovery research.

The vision emphasises equity and fairness and suggests treating innovations such as AI as public goods. These ambitions may conflict with the growing influence of the private sector in R&D and over nation states more broadly. Businesses develop commercial models that depend on data ownership, intellectual property, and proprietary technologies. Private companies control large datasets and infrastructure.

Research commissioned by CaSE and the British Academy highlights that in the absence of government intervention, private firms tend to invest in innovations with a high degree of value capture for the firm but a relatively low degree of social benefit. A degree of government intervention may be needed to ensure that certain innovations are developed, commercialised and implemented to provide further social value.

Greater public involvement in setting research priorities could strengthen legitimacy and public trust. However, in a more polarised information environment there is a risk that participatory processes, particularly on complex or controversial topics, could be dominated by strongly held views, potentially undermining evidence-based decision-making or creating a negative experience for other participants. This highlights the challenge of designing engagement approaches that are inclusive while maintaining a focus on scientific evidence and fact.

Embedding R&D in communities could ensure greater local empowerment, enabling regions, cities, and local institutions to shape research agendas towards community needs. This could help address persistent regional inequalities and make R&D more visible and relevant to local communities. However, a more decentralised approach to R&D decision-making can create challenges for national coordination and strategic focus. In addition, global competition may demand prioritisation of strategic science and technology domains such as AI, biotechnology, or quantum computing.

Meaningful engagement with the public through citizen science, deliberative processes, or participatory policymaking can strengthen public trust, legitimacy, and societal relevance of research. However, for these processes to be meaningful requires long-term sufficient resourcing, including funding, time, infrastructure, and institutional support. In a context where technological change is accelerating and global competition in science and technology is intensifying, there may be pressure for governments and institutions to act quickly on emerging opportunities or risks.

The vision emphasises the importance of maintaining openness to global research collaboration. However, geopolitical fragmentation and rising global competition increase the pressure to protect critical technologies, infrastructure, and talent. There is a risk that science becomes more restricted, with countries reducing access to critical resources, such as talent, infrastructure and data. This could lead to a scenario in which we witness semi-open science within trusted research blocs. This raises questions about how the UK consciously chooses to position itself and use science as a bridge to collaborate with like-minded countries.

National security concerns mean that science and technology are increasingly part of a society’s capacity to thrive, to prosper, to keep itself secure, and to assert its values. This leads to an important consideration around identifying areas in which the UK needs sovereign capability, as well as the right balance of civil versus defence spending in R&D.

R&D is a global endeavour, and migration brings enormous benefits to the UK R&D sector, increasing international collaboration and knowledge exchange. Moreover, the UK will likely increasingly need access to international talent due to an ageing population and the declining fertility rate. However, geopolitical tensions are likely to increase global competition for talent, including researchers. At the same time, domestic political fragmentation may increase pressure for tighter immigration controls.

Open science and open-source practices support transparency and knowledge diffusion. However, businesses rely on intellectual property and commercial confidentiality. This raises questions about how the UK balances retaining an R&D system predicated on openness while ensuring the environment remains attractive enough for businesses to scale and want to remain in the UK.

If private sector R&D expands faster than public funding, research may increasingly focus on profitable sectors. This could reduce support for disciplines where the benefits are less immediately marketable, potentially narrowing the diversity of the research base and affecting the UK’s overall research capability.

The UK currently has strong public research institutions, including universities, which provide a vital contribution to the R&D system. The public sector accounts for approximately 30% of total expenditure on R&D, with 70% by the private sector. Factors such as weaker public finances and the increasing capabilities of the private sector in AI could shift this balance towards the private sector playing a greater role. If businesses provide better infrastructure and more funding than public research institutions, such as universities, this could shift research capacity away from academia. Therefore, thought should be given as to what the appropriate balance of R&D should be, and what capabilities are needed across public institutions and the private sector.

The vision emphasises creating an innovation environment attractive to businesses and investors. Rapid advances in science and technology creates pressure for the UK to move quickly to capture first-mover advantages, attract investment, and maintain global competitiveness. At the same time, many scientific technologies are very complex and inherently uncertain, and it will be challenging to maintain public trust in light of this. This raises questions about how to design regulatory frameworks that are adaptive and responsive enough to keep pace with technological change and do not slow innovation, while still providing sufficient safeguards to protect citizens, ensure ethical standards, and maintain public trust.