Points he highlighted included a promised £22bn investment in Research & Development, a new investment fund for business growth and an updated R&D tax credits regime. “We are making this country a science and technology superpower,” he claimed.
Innovation
If we side-step fiscal policy, public finances and the like, most relevant to Electronics Weekly were his words on the topics of innovation and support for new technologies.
“Investment in our infrastructure is just the first step. We need to do what the people of this country have always done: invent, discover, and create the ideas and technologies that will change the world. So we will also invest more in innovation.”
He stated the UK was “already a world-leader”. With less than 1% of the world’s population, “we have four of the world’s top 20 universities, 14% of the world’s most impactful research and the second most Nobel Laureates,” he noted.
Then he promised a significant increase in the UK government’s R&D investment.
“We want to go further. I can confirm we will maintain our target to increase R&D investment to £22bn. But in order to get there, and deliver on our other priorities, we’ll reach the target in 2026-27 spending, by the end of this Parliament, £20bn a year on R&D. That’s a cash increase of 50%. The fastest increase ever. And I can confirm for the House that this £20bn is in addition to the cost of our R&D tax reliefs.”
“Combined with those tax reliefs, total public investment in R&D is increasing from 0.7% of GDP in 2018 to 1.1% of GDP by the end of the Parliament.”
How does that 1.1% figure compare internationally? Sunak said the latest available data shows an OECD average of 0.7%, with Germany investing 0.9%, France 1% and the United States 0.7%.
“This unprecedented funding will increase core science funding to £5.9bn per year by 2024-25, a cash increase of 37%. Meet the full costs of associating with Horizon Europe, establish the new Advanced Research and Invention Agency with £800m by 2025-26, and strengthen our focus on late-stage innovation, increasing Innovate UK’s annual core budget to £1bn.”
This is double what it was at the start of the Parliament, he stated.
Funds
Sunak also highlighted the Help to Grow initiative for SME productivity and the co-investment venture capital fund, before introducing a new £1.4bn Global Britain Investment Fund, “supporting transformative economic activity, in our world-leading sectors like Life Sciences”.
The Budget also increased the British Business Banks regional financing programmes to £1.6bn
You can read details of the Autumn Budget 2021 on the Treasury website, including a PDF of the full contents of the speech.