Boris Johnson wants the UK to be a science superpower. Part of his plan is to set up a new funding agency, loosely based on the much-praised Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the US. This agency, strongly pushed by the Prime Minister’s adviser Dominic Cummings, will back high-risk, high-payoff projects with minimal bureaucratic control. But there is another part of the science and innovation landscape where at least as much attention is needed as any new proposed agency.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) was set up in 2017 to bring together all the government bodies that use public money to support research and development. These are: the seven research councils that fund academic science in disciplines such as medicine or engineering; Innovate UK, which backs mainly R&D projects in industry; and Research England, which provides grants for universities and encourages the sharing of information.
With a combined budget of over £7 billion a year, UKRI dwarfs the proposed agency, which has been allocated £800 million over a five-year period.
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