FST JOURNAL

The agreement we negotiated to rejoin Horizon prompts a more general question: if we are going to be a global force, a global science and technology superpower, then what is the right balance between our focus on Europe and on the rest of the world? More immediately, we also need to use this opportunity of association not just to get back to where we were, but make the most of the new 108% cap to expand UK Horizon participation.

How we got here

When the Brexit deal was being negotiated, it was an absolute red line for me and those of us involved that we were leaving the political union, but not the scientific, cultural, defence or security unions. In my view, if we were going to leave the political union, we had to redouble our commitment to the other institutions. So we negotiated continued engagement in Horizon, Copernicus and Euratom.

When I came back into Government in the autumn of 2021, I was appalled to find that Horizon had been weaponised in reaction to the difficulties over the implementation of the Brexit deal in Northern Ireland.

While we needed to repair the relationship with our European partners on that issue, it seemed to me that we had to do everything we could to get back into Horizon – but also to prepare for the possibility that we could not. So I was surprised to find there was no Plan B when I arrived. That was clearly needed – and I referred to it as ‘Plan B’ in order to remind everyone that Plan A was to get back into Horizon as quickly as possible.

Yet that moment in time also afforded an opportunity to ask some big questions about the key steps required to become a global leader in deploying science, research, technology and innovation. Not least was the issue of the balance of funding in the total R&D budget across Government of £52 billion over three years. Horizon membership would account for approximately £7 billion but expenditure beyond Europe was only about £0.5 billion. Was that the right ratio for a country looking to do more globally?

Pioneer

That is where the central thrust of the Pioneer plan arose. I wanted to examine what could be done with the Horizon money if it were redeployed on a more global basis. This was partly because it was necessary at the time, but also in order to open up a conversation about some of the things we might and could do, in addition to Horizon.

The Horizon programme has three pillars: first, the talent pillar, the European Research Council (ERC); second, the global and industrial elements; and third, innovation. Pillar 1 is completely essential. There are over 120 ERC professors working in the UK and these are some of our top researchers. When the UK was unable to associate to Horizon, they were faced with having to relocate to Europe. That would have been a disaster. To address that, it seemed to me vital that the UK needed to match that programme with a big Fellowship programme of its own.

In addition, we could use the Pioneer opportunity to address structural weaknesses in our early-, mid- and late-stage Fellowship ecosystem. I met a brilliant, 29-year old biomedical scientist from Oxford at the Max Planck Institute.  She had just been awarded 10-year funding for herself and a postdoc, together with a technician and a discretionary budget, and the choice of all the Max Planck Institutes. When I asked her if she had always wanted to move to Germany, she told me she never wanted to move to Germany, but the offer was one she could not refuse.

That is why we really need to think about: a much stronger UK Fellowship offer. The Treasury likes three-year funding, but if we are to attract and retain top talent, fellowships need to be longer or we will lose out to our competitors.

When I examined Pillar 2, it was striking that the UK global and industrial sector is structured very differently from that of France or Germany. There was Rolls Royce and then hundreds of small companies. In France and Germany, there are perhaps 50-100 big engineering businesses, for whom Horizon is a core funding stream.

The UK should perform better in Pillar 3, being an innovation-focussed economy. Yet it was striking that in Pillar 3 we have many small SMEs, but few commercial companies growing at scale. The reason for this is that funding is structured as an academic process with lots of form-filling. As such, it is not really designed for small companies. So we were not performing particularly well there either.

Pioneer was designed to address these pillars, being structured to attract money – or leverage co-investment – into different sectors and industries such as agritech, clean tech, space, fusion or robotics.

Parts of the Pioneer prospectus remain relevant to the Nurse, Tickell and Grant reviews aimed at making our research ecosystem more globally competitive. China's research budget is $260 billion and America’s  $300 billion a year: as we are committing £20 billion, this needs to have maximum efficiency and impact.

Pioneer was designed to help us do that, while also helping to deepen international collaborations in Europe and beyond. So while negotiations on Horizon were continuing, I went to the key nations that pack a punch in R&D: Switzerland, Israel, Japan. These are countries that are not in the Washington, Beijing, or Brussels blocs, but need to develop deep collaborations with other major economies. We were welcomed with open arms and I was able to negotiate major strategic framework agreements.  These provided frameworks that we could replicate, which we did with Canada. It would be a huge mistake not to pursue them. I believe we could have launched Pioneer early in 2022 but Treasury was not prepared to sign off on the programme as quickly as we wished.

Next steps 

We have now successfully concluded an agreement on Horizon and that is partly because of our allies and friends across Europe. In addition, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the Commission, and the Prime Minister have a very strong working relationship.

The new deal means that we can now get back up to 108% of our contribution, i.e. more than we put in. That is a huge opportunity for the UK which we must seize.

With Horizon re-association, we can now focus on the core business of making our system more competitive. Then, we must realise the huge opportunity we now have. We should make sure that all our high-growth sectors are fully engaged in the programme – clean tech, agritech, space, fusion, quantum engineering, biology, etc.

We need to involve our investor community in this programme. If applying for funding is too academic and complicated, then that has to be addressed. That is why Government has agreed to set up a unit – supported by some big corporates and university experts – to help companies access this money. The opportunity is not just to regain the position we had but to achieve even more.

In due course I hope future Governments will both renew and deepen our collaborations with EU and Horizon partners while also deepening our global collaborations with nations like Japan, Israel, Switzerland, India, Canada and ASEAN.

To be a global science superpower we need to be a major global science and technology player, as well as a strong European partner.