Spending Review 2025

Ahead of the 2025 UK Government spending review, CaSE has conducted a series of programmes of work to help our advocacy around the role of R&D in delivering economic growth for the UK.

The evidence generated and collated by CaSE forms a significant part of our advocacy efforts ahead of, and submission to the 2025 Spending Review.

On this page you can explore our projects in more detail and see how we are combining policy advocacy with public opinion and academic insights.

Investment

We scrutinise how R&D investments are made, to deliver value for the tax-payer and a dynamic economy. This includes work on public and private R&D investment, the UK’s research intensity and the UK’s participation in international research programmes such as Horizon Europe.

Explore

February 2025

Spending Review 2025 – Submission of Evidence

Our work ahead of the 2025 Spending Review has fed into this formal representation.

In this submission we set out the views and policy recommendations of CaSE on increasing public investment in R&D, supporting regional economic growth, and ensuring the sustainability of the R&D system. These have been developed through extensive consultation with our members who span the whole breadth of the R&D sector across all nations and regions of the UK.

February 2025

Mission Critical R&D

How R&D can support delivery of the UK Government’s priorities

This report sets out evidence on the integral role of R&D in driving progress on the UK Government’s missions. We propose a series of measures that the UK Government should take to support the R&D sector to deliver this role. We also highlight actions that the R&D sector itself should take to better communicate to policymakers and the public the value of R&D to the missions.

CaSE Public Attitudes to R&D and the Government's Missions 2024

CaSE carried out research exploring public attitudes towards the Government’s five national ‘missions’, the use of R&D as a tool to achieve these missions, and the role of R&D in supporting the Government’s additional focus on improving national security.

Press release: R&D is critical to achieving the UK Government’s Missions

The Campaign for Science and Engineering’s (CaSE’s) latest report ‘Mission critical R&D: How R&D can support delivery of the UK Government’s priorities’ sets out the vital role of R&D in tackling some of our most pressing global and national issues and how it is instrumental in helping the UK Government meet its objectives across all its missions.

June 2024

CaSE and British Academy join forces to assess the economic impact of UK R&D

A major new collaboration between the British Academy and the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) will provide up-to-date, robust and creative analyses of the economic returns of the UK research base. This analysis will generate a better understanding of the relationship between research, innovation and productivity growth, and contribute to strengthening the evidence base for the development of policies to support and promote innovation.

Building upon The Economic Significance of the UK Science Base (2014) and Understanding SHAPE in R&D (2023), the British Academy and CaSE have commissioned Cambridge Econometrics and Fathom Consulting to undertake complementary economic analyses, using creative approaches to deepen our understanding of economic returns of research and development (R&D).