Cutting edge

For the Wilson government back in the 1960s, the ‘white heat of technology’ was a driving force. In the intervening period, however, it would be fair to say that science, technology and innovation have not been topics that have motivated many members of the Labour movement. Fast forward to 2024, and the Labour government has put five missions at the core of its programme. While not yet so explicitly as under Wilson, science and research will be crucial to every one of these missions. In particular, the missions are for the most part ends; and the party’s programme is deliberately agnostic about how they are achieved. Research will be key to identifying the best pathways to achieving these ends.

Mission-based government demands a new way of governing with science and technology at its core. We will need to harness the skills of scientifically-trained people across the government to understand different policy options for each mission, rapidly evaluating current knowledge to assess risks and identify evidence gaps. This is particularly important given that most parliamentarians and civil servants do not have scientific or engineering backgrounds. Keir Starmer acknowledged this through his appointment of the former chief scientific advisor to the government, Patrick Vallance, as science minister after an illustrious academic medical career in the public and private sectors.

Kickstarting economic growth is the mission that underpins the whole of the government’s programme. The UK has enormous strengths in the quality of its research, but has been historically poor at converting research findings into successful businesses. This is our great opportunity, fostering an environment where research ideas, both ‘blue-sky’ and applied, are nurtured, prototyped and scaled to become tomorrow’s companies, implementing the five missions and generating good jobs and the tax receipts to invest in better public services.

Labour has also promised to make Britain a clean energy superpower. This will also require research and innovation. How can we harness power from the open sea most effectively? What impact will a tidal barrage have on marine biodiversity? and so on. And they are not just questions for the natural and applied sciences. Equally critical are design (how do we design beautiful energy infrastructure that increases public acceptance?), history (what can we learn from the transition from coal gas to natural gas to successfully implement a further transition to domestic hydrogen?), and economics (how can carbon capture and storage, which Labour has announced initial investments in, be made commercially viable?).

Another obvious potential site of innovation is the NHS. Moving to a preventative healthcare system is fundamentally dependent on research and innovation, with new rapid diagnostic capabilities in GP surgeries and pharmacies required to replace expensive and slow hospital-based investigations. Also, while our understanding of mental health has increased in recent decades, it still lags behind physical health and research and innovation are needed to remedy this disparity.

Research and innovation will be important in less obvious areas, too. Consider Labour’s promise to ‘take back our streets’. As technology moves on, the nature of crime changes, and so do the tools for the prevention and detection of crime. As an example, preventing financial crimes in an online world demands expertise in a wide range of specialisms, from behavioural science to software engineering, so that we can keep one step ahead of would-be criminals. Equally, more effective detection and investigation of crime will be dependent on research and innovation in AI and ‘omics’ such as genomics and proteomics.

Labour’s final mission is – rightly – to break down barriers to opportunity. Yet British research is itself characterised by such barriers. Too many people are unable to participate in the research ecosystem for reasons outside of their control. Research funding is concentrated in very specific locations around the UK, mainly around our great universities in the centres of major cities, but also at research campuses such as Alderley Park in Cheshire and Harwell in Oxfordshire. This fits with the well-established paradigm that clustering people, companies and research facilities encourages collaboration and sparks innovation. Such clustering is, however, the antithesis of a research and innovation system that is accessible to all to contribute to, that values the potential of everyone wherever they live in the country. For too many people, science is something which has no apparent relevance to their lives and happens elsewhere. The challenge for the research ecosystem – and a critical research topic – is to reform every aspect of it, from teaching in schools to research methods in universities, from research funding allocations to institutional structures. Only then will we harness all the talents of the British people, making good on our five missions and beyond.

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