The Government and the City must take far greater risks to boost
UK scientific innovation and commercialisation or the UK will be
trapped in a “doom loop” where foreign competitors leapfrog or
exploit British breakthroughs, a Lords report warns.
The influential cross-party Lords Science and Technology
Committee says the UK has already lost its position as a
world-leader in engineering biology - and is in “severe” danger
of slipping further behind without “urgent action” to turbocharge
state and private investment and create a world-leading
regulatory landscape.
There is a “small and closing window” of opportunity for the UK
to reverse its decline and ensure the huge economic and
industrial potential from home-grown scientific advances benefit
Britain first. “We cannot afford to miss it,” the report says.
The unusually robust comments in a report - Don't
fail to scale: Seizing the opportunities of engineering
biology - follow an eight-month inquiry into
engineering biology, a fast-developing, highly competitive area
of science which uses and adapts nature to solve some of the
world's biggest problems.
Engineering biology has the potential to transform entire
sectors, including food, the environment, healthcare, energy and
manufacturing, making them more sustainable while creating
thousands of well-paid jobs and propelling economic growth. The
UK has many strengths in this area including world-leading
universities, scientists and researchers, as well as top tech
experts and a dynamic start-up scene. It has founded more
bio-technology companies than any other nation in Europe.
Current examples of engineering biology in the UK include:
- converting waste into fuel using bio-engineered bacteria
- growing cells in a lab to produce meat. (The UK recently
approved the use of so-called cultivated meat in pet food, the
first European country to do so)
- using biology to recover and recycle rare earth minerals, and
break down pollution in water
- creating bio-engineered plants resistant to diseases,
reducing the need for pesticides and fungicides
- transforming industries like fashion by using biology to
produce and fix dyes to textiles, reducing wasteful processes.
(The committee heard that work was also being undertaken to turn
fatty acids from fatbergs in sewers into products for the perfume
industry, while leather-substitute handbags are made by a UK
company with neither cows nor petroleum involved, but instead
derived from coconut milk treated with engineered bacteria,
making them more sustainable.)
, chair of the
House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, said: “Britain
is a world-leader in scientific innovation, with a heritage that
is the envy of the world. But all too frequently we are crashing
into walls rather than smashing through ceilings. Pioneering
companies urgently need to scale-up to become globally
competitive - not get stuck in the investment ‘valley of death'.
The Committee believes that without urgent action across the key
areas set out in our report, the UK is at severe risk of losing
the potential benefits of a world-leading engineering biology
sector.
“All too often we hear that when companies reach a
certain size, they move abroad for better investment and
development prospects, taking most of the economic benefit with
them. This failure to scale in the UK is a long-standing issue
which requires an urgent, concerted, cross-government approach to
fix.”
The Committee calls for action in seven key areas: strategy,
skills, regulation, infrastructure, investment, adoption and
governance. It says the Government needs to offer incentives to
firms to invest in innovative bio-tech companies and products;
ensure engineering biology is central to its Industrial Strategy;
recommit to its £2 billion funding target over 10 years for
R&D and ensure stable funding for laboratories; have
effective policies in place to attract top talent, including from
abroad; develop more routes into engineering biology such as
through apprenticeships. A national sector champion for
engineering biology should be appointed to help co-ordinate the
sector, it says. It stresses that public investment is needed “at
speed” while private cash must also flow in “or we will continue
to see an exodus of capital and companies to the US”. However, in
common with many technology sectors, scale-up investment is hard
to come by in the private or public sectors in the UK, and the
report stresses the need for urgent reform to address this.
Only after action is taken will UK scientists and technology
companies be able to help tackle global challenges and contribute
to the economic growth, prosperity and wellbeing of the UK, the
Committee says.
Members acknowledge the risk of misuse by “hostile” countries and
individuals, as well as public misunderstanding about science,
and say this only underscores the need for the UK, having
invested in home-grown expertise, to redouble efforts to ensure
its technologies are understood and concerns addressed.
