Queen's Speech 2021 - Life Sciences/Research and Development

“My Government will build on the success of the vaccination programme to lead the world in life sciences, pioneering new treatments against diseases like cancer and securing jobs and investment across the country.”

• The UK is already one of the best places in the world for Life Sciences companies to do business, but we are committed to making the UK a global science superpower that attracts the best people and businesses from across the world.

• The unprecedented COVID-19 challenge has demonstrated the strength of UK Life Sciences capability including:

o The UK has been home to the development of the successful Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

o The first global regulatory approval of any COVID-19 vaccine by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

o A genomic sequencing capacity that carries out over half of all the sequencing of COVID-19 variants that take place in the world.

o The rapid building of new diagnostics and vaccines manufacturing capabilities to enable one of the world’s biggest COVID-19 testing programmes and fastest vaccines roll out per head of the population.

• The UK has one of the world’s best research and sciences bases, including top class universities and globally renowned clinical research.

• We will build on these strengths to:

o Discover the treatments for other diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease.

o Deliver improved outcomes for patients across the UK and tackle health inequality.

o Contribute to levelling up economic opportunity and the creating better paid jobs for people across the UK.

o Bolster our health resilience to ensure the UK is best prepared for any future healthcare challenges.

o Partner with industry, the NHS and academia to ensure the UK continues to lead the world in scientific innovation, especially in cutting edge industries including genomics, early-stage diagnosis, advanced manufacturing and digital health.

• Our Plan for Growth, published on 3 March 2021, committed to build on the UK’s performance and leadership to date to create the most advanced genomic healthcare system in the world and we will bring forward a new Life Sciences strategy this summer.

Key facts

• The UK Life Sciences sector employs over quarter of a million people in high quality jobs and delivers an annual turnover of over £80 billion.

• The Life Science industry employs 224,000 people in England, 15,000 in Scotland, 12,000 in Wales and 6,000 in Northern Ireland. Employment in Life Sciences has increased by 10 per cent since 2010.

• Life Science jobs are spread the length and breadth of the UK, making the Life Sciences industry an important driver for levelling up economic opportunity right across the country. Around 66 per cent of UK Life Science jobs are outside of London and the South East; the East of England and the North West are the second and third strongest areas for Life Sciences employment.

• The Life Sciences sector was responsible for £17 billion of value add in 2018, 9 per cent of the total value-add from manufacturing in the UK.

• The Government has committed funding to vaccines manufacturing bases, including £127 million to the construction of a new state-of-the-art Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Stevenage, to support the mass production of a successful COVID-19 vaccine in the UK, and £140 million to the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre in Oxford, which will have thecapacity to produce enough vaccine doses to serve the entire UK population at scale.

• The new £20 million Medicines and Diagnostics Manufacturing Transformation Fund will support pharmaceutical, diagnostic and MedTech companies to land investments here in the UK, building our domestic manufacturing capability.

Research and Development

“My Ministers will oversee the fastest ever increase in public funding for research...”

• We are committed to making the UK a global superpower, with a world leading research and development environment. Innovation is a key pillar of our approach to tackling the effects of the pandemic and levelling up the UK.

• R&D will continue to be critical to the economic and social recovery from the impact of COVID-19, enabling us to build back better for a greener, healthier and more resilient UK. Our goal is to further strengthen science, research and innovation across the UK, making them central to tackling the major challenges of today and in the future.

• On average, each public pound invested in R&D across our portfolio ultimately leverages around £2 of additional private sector investment and creates £7 of net benefits.

• The Government is investing £14.9 billion in R&D in 2021-22. This investment means Government R&D spending is now at its highest level in four decades. We are committed to increasing public expenditure on R&D to £22 billion, helping to deliver on our target to increase total UK R&D investment to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027.

• In the R&D Roadmap, we set out our priorities for boosting innovation in the economy. We want to make the UK a world-leading place to innovate and bring new products and services to market.

• BEIS will publish an Innovation Strategy this summer to inspire, facilitate and unleash innovation across the UK; supporting and harnessing the tremendous capability of UK innovators to boost future prosperity locally and nationwide.

• We have already introduced the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) Bill, to unleash the potential of the UK’s world-class research and science base.

• Our Review of Research Bureaucracy will advise on practical solutions
  to substantially reducing unnecessary research bureaucracy, freeing up researchers to devote more time to their academic roles and pursuing world-class research.

  Key facts

• The UK is in the top four countries in the Global Innovation Index 2021. It is home to four of the top 10 universities in the world.

• The UK has a world-leading research base. With less than one per cent of the world’s population, the UK accounts for 4 per cent of researchers, 7 per cent of the world’s publications and 14 per cent of the world’s most highly-cited academic publications.

• UK businesses performed almost £26 billion of R&D in 2019, an increase of £822 million (3.3 per cent) compared to 2018, part of a long-term trend of positive annual growth.

• In 2018, spending on R&D was 1.71 per cent of GDP, an increase on the previous year’s figure of 1.67 per cent.

• The private sector invested £27 billion in R&D in the UK in 2018, an annual increase of £1.7 billion (6.6 per cent) and part of a long-term trend.

• According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2019 total UK business employment in R&D grew by 11,000 to 263,000 full-time equivalents, an increase of 4.4 per cent since 2018.