Liz Kendall’s speech at Innovation for Growth Summit

A speech delivered by Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Liz Kendall, at Innovation for Growth Summit on Monday 24 November 2025.

"Good afternoon.

I'm absolutely delighted to join you at today's Summit. And what a fantastic venue, the London Science Museum, a place that stands as a testament to human ingenuity, curiosity, and a shared spirit of endeavour.

I am really honoured to be in a room where that spirit is represented so strongly. Here today, we have companies finding treatments for early-stage lung cancer. Engineers using tiny atomic reactions to create heat, without fossil fuels, in small modular reactors. We have the Faraday Institution exploring whether robots can safely disassemble old batteries, and IBM working with NASA on an open-source AI model that can predict what's happening on the surface of the Sun, 93 million miles away.

All of this made possible by the UK's incredible research ecosystem. Our world-class universities, scientists, innovators, investors and businesses. All of this, and all of you, make me very proud to be British.

And you make me full of hope for this country's future. There are many people out there who seem to tell us that Britain is completely broken, and that our best days are in the past.

I've always been a realist. I know we face big challenges, as a country, and as a world. But I am also an optimist. I'm a glass half full kind of a woman. Because when I look around this room and see all the talent, and experience, and success stories, I know Britain's best days are yet to come.

Your work is critical to helping tackle everything from climate change, to chronic diseases, and much, much more besides. And your work is vital to our economy, too.

My one simple message today, and it's the very first thing that Patrick Vallance said to me when I got this job, is there is no route to stronger growth in this country, no answer to how we pay our way, or compete with the rest of the world, without science, technology and innovation leading front and centre.

That starts with research and development, and UKRI's crucial role.

We know every pound spent on public R&D generates £8 in benefits for the country, over the long term.

We've just published evidence that shows over 6 years, compared to their peers, businesses that receive R&D grants see their workforce increase by 21% and their turnover increase by 23%.

That's real prosperity and real jobs, real money in people's pockets, and for our vital public services too.

That is why I am very proud that over the Spending Review period, this Labour government has put the biggest investment into R&D of any government ever. Because we are determined to do everything possible to back this vital sector.

Now you will all know that the relationship between government, politics, and research goes back a long way. It was a little over a century ago, as the First World War was coming to an end, that the then Prime Minister, Lloyd George, set up a new committee as part of the reconstruction effort.

The man appointed to lead it was Lord Haldane, a military strategist, a scholar of Schopenhauer and Hegel, a Liberal who later became a Labour Cabinet Minister. Haldane took the job very seriously.

War had plunged the government into chaos with haphazard emergency arrangements. Peacetime was a chance to do things afresh. So in 1918, his committee published a report on the machinery of government. It had a long list of recommendations.

Interestingly, among them was Haldane's advice on the employment of women in the civil service. “We are strongly of the opinion,” he wrote, “that the range and varieties of the duties entrusted to women should be extended in practically all departments.”

I hope if he came into my office today, he'd be pleased to see just how far things have come.

But I also know there is much, much more to do.

That's why I have already established a Women in Tech Task Force to ensure there are more women in technology, and more technology that works for women, and why I'm delighted that this week we will be announcing the next round of funding for the UK's Women in Innovation Awards.

With an annual funding pot, this year worth £4.5 million, these awards will support around 60 female founders with a grant of up to £75,000 each to help scale up their brilliant, cutting-edge companies.

But of course, the main reason Haldane's report is remembered today is for what came to be known as the Haldane Principle.

The idea that public research should be done by independent bodies with enough time to focus on an issue, not government officials, with the urgent demands of day-to-day administration.

The business of inquiry and thinking, the report said, should be in the hands of those whose duty it is to study the future. We urge strongly, it went on, that better provision should be made for inquiry, research and reflection.

Lord Haldane would, I hope, heartily approve of UKRI, and today's vibrant ecosystem of research institutes, universities, spin-outs, charities and more, all dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the future.

But I think there's an important nuance here.

In the 1960s and later in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, the Haldane principle became somewhat mischaracterised as the idea that public research should be completely separate from public policy goals.

That all researchers should be left entirely to their own devices, doing empirical work with no strategic direction, or as some would say, no interference.

Now there is of course a clear middle ground here. I strongly believe that a substantial proportion of UK research, even if government-funded, should be for open-ended, unrestricted exploration, for scientists to follow wherever the science takes them.

We are already world-leading in basic curiosity-led science, and we are determined that that should continue.

That is why we are today announcing £38.6 billion for UKRI projects over the next 5 years, with more than a third of that money, £14 billion, going towards curiosity-driven research, entirely investigator-led work, simply to improve our understanding of the world, with government backing but not directed by government.

That is absolutely right.

But we also want and need to be world-leading in innovation, and the application of science and research.

And that brings me to the case for prioritisation. I often think of the analogy with the Olympics here.

Back in the '90s, you may remember, Olympic sport was not the UK success story we know today.

The ‘96 Games in Atlanta, Team GB came home with just 15 medals and a single gold, and we finished 36th in the world.

At the turn of the century, that changed.

In 2000, in Sydney, we won 28 medals. In London, it was 65, including 29 golds, ranking third globally.

And who can ever forget that Super Saturday, watching Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah?

And then in 2016, in Rio, we came second, winning more medals than any other country behind only the US.

What explains the turnaround?

A big part of the Team GB story is about funding.

Not just more money for sports, full stop, but how exactly that money is spent.

Some call it the “no-compromise” approach, where you give the most resources to the best-performing sports.

In other words, doing fewer things better.

I believe, and the government believes, we can learn from this for UK innovation.

We already have the top talent, the thinkers and companies who rank up there with our legendary athletes.

But we know funding gets spread too thin.

We have got to be smarter about where we prioritise, not stretching resources trying to do everything, but the gold-medal research, focused work, that changes lives.

Finding cures for diseases, clean, abundant energy, and innovations that drive a strong economy, where research can be applied and commercialised more easily, so that companies can grow, and our national wealth along with them.

So on top of the £14 billion for curiosity-driven R&D, today we are also announcing £8 billion for R&D that is targeted towards the UK's national priorities. Capitalising on areas where we already excel but could go even further, like net zero research, defence, health and our Industrial Strategy sectors.

We're also announcing £7 billion to help fledgling businesses with real potential to scale up and succeed, and an additional £7 billion to ensure we have the capability to deliver on our priorities. Investing in the skills, and state-of-the-art facilities and labs, that UK researchers need.

As part of this, we are doubling R&D investment in critical technologies, like engineering biology, AI and quantum, to a record £4 billion over the next 4 years, with R&D investment in AI alone growing from £600 million to £1.6 billion.

Because we recognise the huge potential these critical technologies have to grow and thrive right here in the UK.

Because we are determined that this is a race we are going to win.

Gold-medal innovation is already happening in the UK, and much of it is in this room today.

I believe, with the right backing and the right priorities, there is even more to come.

Where others seek to take Britain back to the past or talk our country down, this government is backing the future.

If we're smart about funding, and target the most promising areas, and if we work together in partnership: government, civil society and businesses together; we can create the same spirit of hope and optimism, based on Great British ingenuity, and inspire our country for generations to come.

Thank you."