It’s a welcome call, but one which has been made by various organisations over the last few years. The erstwhile Department of Trade and Industry used to publish the R&D Scoreboard, which acted as something of a league table. It was chopped in 2010 as part of spending cuts, but if you go back to the 2009 version, you find the percentage of sales revenues invested into R&D was – guess what? – 1.7%, compared to a global average of 3.6%.
To be fair to the Government, it has earmarked quite a bit of cash for innovation in recent budgets, with the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund set to play a key role.
According to Tom Thackray, the CBI’s innovation director: “For years, the UK has under-invested and this country’s spending on R&D has stagnated as more countries race ahead. We want to see the Government and business community putting innovation at the very heart of our economic future. The Government has taken positive steps and the new Industrial Strategy will provide a genuine opportunity to take a leap forward.”
It’s hard to understand this long term reluctance to invest in R&D at what are thought to be suitable levels – particularly when attractive tax credits have been available. While the UK does the ‘R’ part quite well, it has often fallen down when it comes to ‘D’ – and there are many instances of good ideas being commercialised elsewhere with great success.
“UK innovation has some great strengths – including ground-breaking research at our universities,” said Thackray, “but we need to get better at turning these into final products.”
CBI points out that investing in innovation brings economic and social benefits that help improve lives and communities, meaning more first-rate firms, more jobs and attracting foreign investment. And yet UK companies remain reluctant to invest.
