In today’s budget, the government has put its weight behind science and innovation, with a raft of new measures announced.
11 Mar 2020, 4 min read
Just weeks after calling itself ‘unashamedly pro-tech’, the government has outlined an ambitious agenda for science, innovation and digital infrastructure. The Budget unveiled a series of big-ticket spending commitments in the innovation and digital policy space, many of which reflected CBI asks in our budget submission.
On R&D
With a series of announcements on R&D support, there were three major campaigning wins for businesses, which will enable them to continue innovating
- Major increases to public R&D funding with the Chancellor setting out plans to raise funding to £22bn by 2024-25. This will take direct public R&D support to 0.8% of GDP and is major step in putting the UK on course to reach the target of 2.4% spend by 2027. The CBI will now be looking to Spending Review to ensure additional funding supports business R&D all around the UK
- A commitment of £800m for the set-up of a UK ‘ARPA’ agency to
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