New report warns that UK research and development faces an uncertain future without stronger public engagement and strategic investment

If the UK R&D’s sector is to remain relevant, resilient and able to meet future challenges, the government must strengthen its foundations and provide sustained support. The science community also needs to be more strategic and open to increasing the sector’s visibility. The Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) produced these four recommendations after distilling feedback from across the sector in response to its Reimagining R&D project, which set out a vision of what the R&D system should look like in 2045.

CaSE says the government and funders need to provide a long-term vision and a stable funding base. They should also offer clearer policies to support institutional diversity and to recognise the independent nature of research and development. It also calls for a more joined-up approach that provides one entrance point to the innovation system to help businesses and organisations. Additionally, the UK needs to decide what it’s good at, be strategic and develop an international R&D strategy to encourage global partnerships.

One of the challenges facing the sector is the need to sustain public and political support for R&D investment, CaSE warns. Currently, this is ‘broad but shallow’. R&D might have benefited from broad cross-party support in recent decades, but this could change, particularly if public support weakens. As a result, the government and the sector need a clearer narrative to explain how R&D delivers both economic and societal value.

The findings come as the shadow science secretary, Julia Lopez, told the Times Higher Education that the Conservatives would not let the Haldane Principle, which states that governments fund research while experts decide who receives grants, stop them defunding ‘bizarre’ projects.

‘[This] will require deliberate choices by the sector and by policymakers,’ says Daniel Rathbone, CaSE’s deputy executive director. ‘At CaSE, we are determined to drive change as a sector to be more open, inclusive and responsive, to turn passive public support into a deeper connection. If we do all these things, R&D can help shape events rather than simply react to them, creating a resilient and trusted system capable of delivering economic and societal benefits for everyone.’

Kieron Flanagan, a science policy expert at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, says the overall message chimes with what science policy scholars have been arguing for a long time: that any consensus about the societal value of R&D investment no longer holds. ‘It’s well beyond time for R&D communities to engage with broader publics and their concerns that while R&D is nice to have, it’s not necessarily a short-term priority.’ A lot can be learned from the parts of the R&D community already experienced with this, such as the medical research charities funding laboratory research very far from any clinical application, rather than visible near-patient interventions, he adds.

Meanwhile, Elsevier and Universities UK (UUK) have developed a data dashboard for institutions and policymakers that aims to help them understand growth and investment both regionally and nationally. The data shows that universities ‘predict’ and specialise in high-growth sectors. That is, they were forging ahead with research in areas years before they were singled out in the government’s 2025 Industrial Strategy.

The findings also reveal that the UK has a geographically diverse, interconnected research ecosystem, challenging the assumption that research expertise is limited to just a handful of locations. Significantly, the survey found that regional research and economic strengths do not always align.

Flanagan isn’t surprised that research and economic strengths often don’t align. ‘The geography of economic activity is driven by factors such as skills and labour markets, demand, access to resources and infrastructure, and is often shaped by historical dependencies,’ he points out. ‘On the other hand, the geography of scientific research activity is shaped by national funding decisions, with a focus on academic excellence and little or no consideration of economic needs or the geography of industry. However, whilst the UUK research shows that there is excellent research across the UK, it often feels impossible to do anything other than to continue to concentrate funding in the most prestigious universities.’