The government’s decision to set up a new research funding agency, to be known as the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), marks an important break in UK science and innovation policy – potentially more important than any recent government initiative in this field.
The aim, as the Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng explained last week, is to fund high-risk, high-reward research, ‘supporting ground-breaking discoveries that could transform people’s lives for the better.’ As part of this mission, the chief executive of ARIA will be free to choose which areas to research and which projects to fund without direction from ministers. It is this independence from political and bureaucratic control which will distinguish the new agency from established funding bodies, along with its ability to place big bets on ambitious projects with an acceptance that some will fail (which Policy Exchange argued for in a paper published early last year).
The need for this kind of agency was strongly supported by Dominic Cummings, formerly chief adviser to Boris Johnson.
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