He was clear that while R&D and innovation are essential and not just a nice-to-have, it will be difficult to make the case for investment when up against funding for hospitals and other public services, when the Government is operating in such a constrained fiscal environment.
When asked by our Executive Director, Alicia Greated, about engagement with the public, Mr Kyle said that he has things he wants to achieve in politics but not at the expense of the people who put him there. He told a story about how he had gone into politics with the aim of supporting youth pathways to education, but engagement with constituents showed that trains were their big problem, so he focused on that to support their needs.
From his speech it’s clear the sector needs to support him in making the case for R&D in the spending review and that the Secretary of State will welcome this support. However, we don’t just need economic evidence – we need evidence that it helps to improve people’s lives and livelihoods. CaSE already has this data at its fingertips and we’ll be using that to make a stand for R&D investment for the future.
Following the Secretary of States departure we were joined by an expert panel who discussed the speech they had just heard, as well as the political realities of getting R&D onto the government’s agenda from their first-hand experience.
CaSE Executive Director Dr Alicia Greated was joined by:
- Dr George Dibb, Associate Director for Economic Policy and Head of the Centre for Economic Justice, IPPR
- Rachel Wolf, Founding Partner, Public First
- Ben Johnson, Professor of Practice, Research and Innovation Policy, University of Strathclyde
A write up of this part of the session will follow.
