House of Lords Science & Technology Committee Inquiry
Ladies and Gentlemen, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee is launching an inquiry into the financing and scaling of UK Science and Technology and as many of you are in a prime position to offer expert comment and observation I thought you might like the opportunity to contribute – please see below the details if you would like to do so.
Warmest regards
John
Today, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee is launching an inquiry into "Financing and Scaling UK Science and Technology: Innovation, Investment, Industry”. Our call for evidence is now open for written evidence submissions.
https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/3628
The detailed questions we are interested in and guidance for submissions can be found in the Call for Evidence. Any written evidence submissions are due by Friday, 9th May. Please forward this email to anyone you know who might be interested in submitting evidence.
Read further information here: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/193/science-and-technology-committee/news/205936
Background
The UK has world-class research but often struggles to translate this into world-leading companies that stay and grow here. Our Committee is interested in why this happens and how we can fix it. This is a perennial problem, but we're in a new context. The science and technology sector faces new challenges from geopolitical and technological shifts, as well as a challenge in light of stagnant productivity to demonstrate improvements in the economy and people's lives. A relatively new Government provides opportunities for new thinking and policy recommendations.
Our inquiry
We're investigating whether the UK has a strategy to ensure that our brightest scientific ideas and technologies can scale and benefit the UK's economy and public services. We want to explore international comparisons and the policy levers that the Government has at its disposal to fix the longstanding challenge of scaling technologies and companies here. The Call for Evidence contains more detail on the questions we’re exploring, which include:
- What are the key barriers to translating UK science into global companies? What can we learn from science and technology policies from other countries?
- How should the UK's science and technology strategy respond to major economic, geopolitical and technological shifts? Are our strategic priorities right? Is there proper cross-government coordination?
- Is the UK's research and innovation landscape well-structured to support commercialisation? How effective are organisations like Innovate UK, the Catapults, and university spin-out processes?
- How can Government encourage more private-sector R&D investment? Why do UK tech companies and capital often move to the US? We want to hear from entrepreneurs and investors who've moved their companies abroad, and those with recommendations around how the UK’s capital markets and institutional investors can be encouraged to invest more capital in UK science and technology companies.
- Are public sector investment vehicles like the National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank properly resourced and mandated to make meaningful scale-up investments?
- What Government policy levers could better support science and technology scale-up? Are procurement reforms working? Are R&D tax credits effective?
We want to hear from you:
Whether you're a researcher, entrepreneur, investor, scientist, policy expert, in academia, policy, or industry, we want your insights on how the UK can better finance and scale science and technology.
We welcome focused, evidence-based submissions with concrete, actionable policy recommendations. Opinions are welcome too. Evidence submissions will be published online and may be used to inform our final report with policy conclusions and recommendations for Government.
If you have any questions about submitting, please don’t hesitate to let us know via [email protected]. We would also appreciate very much if you sent this call for evidence to any other parties who may be interested in submitting: we want to cast as wide a net as possible in the written evidence we receive.
We appreciate your efforts to help us in our inquiry.
House of Lords Science and Technology Committee