CaSE in 2024 – Director’s address to the AGM

Hello and welcome to the 2024 CaSE AGM. It’s a real pleasure to be talking to you all today.

This is my first CaSE AGM, having only been seven months in the role of Executive Director following joining CaSE in April this year.

It has been an exciting time to join CaSE and has been a very busy and productive year. Two of the most significant impacts on our year were the General Election and the genesis of a new government.

These events and all the related activities, not least the Autumn Budget, have been a great opportunity for us to show the value of the work CaSE does. It has been a critical time for us to embed our priorities, as an organisation and a sector, into the political thinking. We have really risen to this challenge, and I feel extremely proud of what we have achieved.

Today I would like to highlight some areas of our work from this year, our policy advocacy, our public opinion work through the Discovery Decade programme, and the General Election – a great example of the power of combining our policy advocacy work with our public opinion work.

A look first at Policy Advocacy

We continued our work on immigration – and bringing skilled workers to the UK

This year we published a briefing on how crucial international talent is if the UK is to achieve its research intensity ambitions and have responded, analysed and influenced various other developments in immigration policy.

We know that immigration of skilled workers is a critical issue for many of our members.

The last government made a series of changes to the immigration rules – they made some visas more expensive and developed a negative rhetoric around immigration. The impacts of these changes are now starting to filter through – and we see international student numbers decreasing across the UK.

At CaSE we are continuing to work with UKRI and other stakeholders to ensure that we have the evidence base we need to push for further, and positive, changes to immigration policy particularly around the upfront costs of visas.

Under the new government, the tone and messaging on immigration and international students has improved. This is a good first step – but we are still working hard to advocate for policy that will support the R&D sector with the talent and connections it needs.

In May 2024, we published our report, Backing Business R&D

The business sector contributes a large amount of money to UK R&D. In 2022 alone business contributed £49.9 billion, which was 71% of the UK’s total spending on R&D.

As this is such a critical part of the research landscape, CaSE wanted to look at the barriers that UK businesses face when investing in R&D. In our report, we set out recommendations for the UK Government that will help build an attractive environment for businesses, and promote further business investment into R&D.

Another critical theme for us this year has been the contribution UK Universities

As we all know, UK universities have faced significant financial pressures in recent times. At CaSE we wanted to look at the vital contribution of universities to the R&D system – contributions which are often intangible, but which none the less provide benefits to the wider research landscape and to society more broadly.

In July we published our briefing, ’Universities: A crucial component of UK R&D’.

Briefings and reports such as this, and the others I have mentioned, help us to advocate in a clear and evidence-based way on behalf of our members and the sector. Our outputs don’t just sit on our website, we continually deploy them in our everyday advocacy. For example our universities briefing was included in our letter to the new Secretary of State for Education.

Public Opinion on R&D

Come the end of next month we will have completed our three-year Discovery Decade programme, supported by Wellcome. Our work on public attitudes to R&D has been enormously successful and has attracted a lot of interest.

We have polled over 30,000 people across UK and organised over a dozen focus groups to hear members of the public talk about R&D in their own words. This has helped us gain understanding of public opinions on R&D, understand how to increase our connection with the public, and explore what language, what messages, and which messengers are best to use when forging better connections with the public and policymakers.

In December 2023, we launched our Advocacy Toolkit with two guides:

1. Guide for Engaging the Public – which provides advice on how to talk to the public about R&D
   
   
2. Guide for Engaging Politicians – for those speaking to politicians about R&D

This year, we also carried out some really interesting in-depth pieces of work

1. First was a deliberative dialogue, engaging closely with the public to create a society-centred vision for R&D. We published our report ‘People’s Vision for R&D: How to move from principles to action’ in September.
   
   
2. Last week – we published a significant study ‘People and Places: How to put R&D on the map’. This explores how to use placeto strengthen connections with R&D on a local level. I am proud to say it has received lots of interest and traction from MPs already – including Chi Onwurah, the new chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee.
   
   
3. I also want to mention our first ever conference ‘Making R&D matter to more people’, hosted at the Royal Institutionin September. Thank you to the many members who attended and helped make it an exciting and unique event. We were delighted to have great speakers and attendees, including the new Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle – his appearance in the evening session, one of his first in post, certainly attracted a great deal of interest.

Finally on Public Opinion, I am very pleased that we have recently been awarded a grant of £2.7million over 5 years by Wellcome. This grant is to build on our work on public opinion towards R&D, and is a testament to CaSE’s great work so far in our Discovery Decade programme. It gives us the confidence to achieve our goal to integrate public opinion insights into the heart of our policy work at CaSE.

The General Election – the most significant event this year

I want to highlight this area of CaSE’s work in particular. It demonstrates the power of integrating the public opinion insights into the heart of our policy work at CaSE. Drawing on what we know the public think and feel helps generate a compelling message that resonates with politicians and policy makers.

In March, in preparation for the election, we led in the production of a R&D sector joint statement. We brought together over 30 leaders of UK R&D to collectively call for the UK to be a leading country in the G7 on R&D investment.

This was a statement to show our united position on the importance of R&D for the UK, and an excellent example of CaSE’s convening power across the sector.

Then, a few months later, on a rainy 22^nd May, a day that we can all remember. Rishi Sunak called the General Election. I think it is fair to say that this announcement caught many people by surprise. In line with common wisdom, we had been expecting the election to take place later in the year. With the accelerated timetable upon us, we had to condense our plans significantly.

In the 6 weeks between the election being called and polling day, CaSE managed to be active across a range of advocacy activities. Including:

• We organised a General Election Science Hustings – in partnership with the UK’s major academies
  
  
• We wrote to party leaders and analysed manifestos
  
  
• We developed a 100-day plan for the new government

One area of our work which was particularly exciting was our engagement with election candidates. We worked very quickly to condense our plans to deliver a major public-centred advocacy campaign to engage Parliamentary Candidates. This ambitious campaign took our message to thousands of candidates from all political persuasions – it was a fantastic example of policy advocacy and public opinion insights working together.

Public opinion was a vital tool in our political engagement this year. With the insights:

1. CaSE produced a first-of-its-kind constituency level map of predicted public opinions towards R&D.
   
   
2. We sent a personalised email – to nearly 4000 parliamentary candidates with information about their constituency and sharing our Guide to Engaging on the Doorstep. This campaign received some very positive responses from candidates.
   
   
3. In July, after the election – with a new Labour Government in office, and a host of new MPs, many who had never been an MP before – we sent a personalised welcome pack to each Westminster MP. This contained an introduction to R&D, our constituency level information on public attitudes, and case studies of R&D in their region, contributed by our members.

A few weeks ago, on 30^th October, we heard the Autumn Budget

In the run up to the budget we were made aware of the possibility of a flat cash settlement for the research budget, which may have had to cover extra ‘tucked in’ costs.

We responded rapidly to media requests, making the potential impact of this move on the sector very clear. Simultaneously, we coordinated a joint letter to the Chancellor. CaSE brought together 38 organisation in 24 hrs to sign that letter – which was widely reported in the media.

Following these efforts, we then worked with partners in the sector, and the media to keep attention on this topic – we coordinated a letter to the Times and supported an opinion piece and article in the Observer.

I am pleased to say that at the budget speech the Chanceller made it clear that “the UK’s science base is a crucial national asset.” She committed to ‘protecting’ Government R&D investment, with £20.4 billion allocation to R&D in the next financial year.

The contents of the Budget were generally a good outcome for the R&D sector. However, the devil is in the detail.

We are still monitoring and working out the details of the budget as they develop, and very much have our eyes on the next stage, the spring spending review.

We have seen the power of bringing together our policy advocacy and public opinion work – this has gathered pace and support from across the R&D sector. We feel we are giving a unique perspective and insight that is having real impact.

Media and communications

This year we have worked with major national news outlets such as the BBC, Financial Times, and The Times. CaSE team members have made at least 65 appearances in the national media and we have doubled our LinkedIn following in the last year.

CaSE’s profile has been very high. In the last two weeks alone, I gave evidence at the first Science, Innovation, and Technology Select Committee session of this parliament, and Ben Bleasdale and I have both spoken at parliamentary events. We have strong platform of profile to build on in the coming year.

The future

This is a very important time for the sector and for CaSE.

In spring we have the spending review. In January we start our new grant from Wellcome – as part of which, we are refreshing the CaSE strategy to integrate the public opinion work as a core of what we do at CaSE. In this next year we will be working hard to continue to keep R&D at the centre of the thinking of the Government.

I would like to finish by saying thank you

Sarah Main talked to you at the last AGM – and I know how much effort she put into building the CaSE team over her 10 years at the helm.

The highlight of my time at CaSE has been working with such a committed and supportive group. We are a small organisation that has achieved a huge amount. The enthusiasm and expertise of each member of the CaSE team allows us to be brave, agile, and punch well above our weight. I always feel a great sense of pride when I talk about what we have achieved together. The team has a great culture and attitude, and, as well as doing some very hard work this year, we have also had a lot of fun.

I want to take a moment to mention one person in particular – Daniel Rathbone

Daniel took on the role of Interim Executive Director late last year and did brilliantly at managing two jobs at once and keeping the show on the road.

He has spent enormous amount of time helping me in my first seven months at CaSE. You’ll know Daniel for his excellent work on R&D policy, but he is also a kind and generous colleague.

Thank you to our very supportive Board members – and our Chair Bob Sorrell

A particular mention to Kim Graham, Jane Hughes and Mark Price – Board members that are stepping down today – thank you for your support and giving us your time and input over the years.

And very importantly our CaSE members.

You will all be aware that CaSE is a charity. We are entirely dependent on our broad and varied membership, and I am extremely grateful for the support and input from all CaSE members this year, including essential funding from Wellcome.

We believe that R&D and innovation are vital for a healthy and thriving society, and by working together to ensure that policy supports the R&D sector, we can improve lives and livelihoods.

I look forward to working with you all to achieve this going forward.