Financing and Scaling UK Science and Technology: Innovation, Investment, Industry

RAND Europe was pleased to submit evidence to the Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry on financing and scaling UK science and technology. Our submission highlighted wide-ranging barriers to research translation, including financing gaps, regulatory challenges, commissioning and procurement barriers, and issues with access to skilled labour. We noted that small UK firms, including university spinouts, struggle to access long-term growth capital, impeding their ability to scale-up, and that increasing public research investment can stimulate private-sector R&D activity.

The submission outlines the following recommendations for the future:

• Access to finance: Improve innovators’ access to finance, including through improving the environment for venture and long-term growth capital and through public funds and collaborative programmes (e.g. through the ISCF and the SIPF).
• Workforce: Support workforce development, including through upskilling, reskilling, and apprenticeships.
• Workforce: Create skills frameworks and anticipate future workforce demands using foresight approaches.
• Regulation: Simplify regulation to reduce administrative burden and support regulation that is responsive to innovation, while remaining safe and trustworthy.
• Regulation: In establishing regulation for novel and emerging technologies, consider international regulatory practice, remaining mindful that innovators can find it challenging and cumbersome to navigate diverse regulatory requirements in different jurisdictions.
• Demand signalling: Signal clear demands for innovation (i.e. clear specifications and requirements) using target product profiles, horizon scanning tools, and earmarked funding for innovation.
• Collaboration and partnerships: Support close communication and collaboration between the public, industry, and not-for-profit sectors and across countries to support innovation and translation, including supporting porous interfaces for labour mobility and skills exchange and drawing learnings from past and ongoing partnerships.
• UK competitiveness: Increase public research investment to attract more private R&D spending.