“My Ministers will...introduce legislation to establish an
advanced research agency.”
The purpose of the Bill is to:
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Create the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) as a
new statutory corporation to fund high-risk, high-reward
R&D.
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Give ARIA broad powers to take an innovative approach to
research funding, and a mandate for higher tolerance for
failure when pursuing high-risk research.
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Define ARIA’s relationship with the Government, giving it
autonomy and freedoms to manage its day-to-day affairs.
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Support this agile operating model by freeing ARIA from some
standard public sector obligations.
The main benefits of the Bill would be:
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Creating a new agency to fund high-risk, high-reward
research, to enhance the UK’s R&D offer and help
cement the UK’s position as a global science superpower.
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Supporting the creation of ground-breaking technology,
with the potential to produce transformational benefits
to our economy and society, new technologies and new
industries. For example, the US Advanced Research
Projects Agency took a similar approach to funding and
supported the breakthrough research that underpins the
internet and the Global Positioning System (GPS).
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Diversifying the R&D funding system and providing
innovative and flexible tools to push the boundaries of
science at speed, reaching an even wider range of the
research community.
The main elements of the Bill are:
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Creating ARIA as a statutory corporation.
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Providing broad functions for ARIA to conduct,
support or commission research- related activities,
with regard to the desirability of doing so for the
benefit of the UK.
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Explicitly tolerating failure in pursuing ambitious
research, development, and exploitation.
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Establishing an arm’s length relationship to Government, set
out in ARIA’S procedure, membership and appointments
processes, with limited information and direction rights for
the Secretary of State.
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Providing powers for the Secretary of State to dissolve ARIA
that can only be exercised after 10 years.
Territorial extent and application
• The provisions in this Bill will apply and extend to the whole
of the UK. Although research and innovation is a reserved matter,
the Bill will amend the reserved schedules of the Scotland Act
1998, Government of Wales Act 2006, and Northern Ireland Act 1998
to list the ARIA as a reserved body.
Key facts
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The creation of ARIA will complement the work of UK Research
and Innovation (UKRI) while building on the Government’s
ambitious R&D Roadmap published in July 2020.
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The Government has announced its plans to invest £14.9
billion in R&D in 2021- 22, building towards the
Government’s target of 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product
being spent on R&D across the UK economy by 2027, the
current Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
average.
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There is substantial evidence that investment in R&D
increases productivity with significant spillover benefits
from public and private investment. This will drive long-term
economic growth, support the UK’s position as a global force
in science and innovation, and create wider benefits for
society.
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The March 2020 Budget confirmed the Government’s commitment
to an £800 million investment in the creation of ARIA up to
2024-25.
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Since the 1950s, US agencies have also focussed solely on
transformative science and technological research programmes,
with a lean structure and a high-risk tolerance. This
approach has yielded remarkable results. The Advanced
Research Projects Agency (now DARPA) played a vital role in
research forming the basis for the Internet. It also funded a
precursor to GPS, and the world’s first Weather Satellite:
TIROS 1. More recently, it has been behind inventions like
voice recognition technology, as used in Apple’s SIRI.
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Other countries have also created bodies inspired by DARPA,
including Japan’s ‘Moonshot R&D’, Germany’s SPRIN-D and,
in the UK, Wellcome LEAP.
