Summary

Innovation policy in Britain has broken. The UK government has a laudable aim to become a 'science superpower', but lacks an ambitious policy agenda to actually make good on this promise. A new paper published by Sir Tony Blair and Lord Hague, ‘A New National Purpose‘, is a bold call to action and offers such a plan.

Sir Tony Blair and Lord Hague are two of the most senior living politicians in Britain. The two of them coming together to lead a paper is like Obama and Romney getting together to make a political statement. Incredibly rare, but when it happens, highly impactful.

We make a range of recommendations covering reform of key R&D institutions, procurement and talent pipelines, and new international partnerships to support democracy-affirming technologies.

Beneath is a summary of our report. Feel free to message me on Twitter (@Tom_Westgarth15) if you want to discuss this further.

Overall narrative

In Britain, science and technology policy is back on the menu. A new Department for Science, Technology, and Innovation has just been set up. The Advanced Research and Invention Agency is hiring programme managers to deliver their work. The Chancellor is using ChatGPT to write the introduction to his speeches.

And rightly so. Science and technology have been the driving force of progress for much of our modern age. Our accomplishments allow us to live longer, healthier lives, to travel across the world and into space, and to generate food and energy at scale.

The current revolution in AI, climate technology, and biotech may well dwarf the impact of the industrial revolution. The tech revolution is causing the world to change rapidly; Britain needs to lead or be left behind.

The current Research and Development (R&D) debate in government is far too narrow. The main difference between Labour and the Conservatives is an argument over the percentage of GDP that goes towards R&D. But what we really need is both sides to offer a coherent answer on how they will support the talent that develops and commercialises new technologies, develop a procurement system that enables government to digitise effectively, and formulate the Whitehall machinery that can make or break good R&D strategies.

Policy Proposals

When it comes to reorganising government, we believe that prime ministerial authority should drive R&D policy. We propose ...

Posts

Wiki Contributions

Comments