Research, Development and Innovation Organisational Landscape Report

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I am not entirely sure where those figures come from. The R&D intensity of the UK—that is to say, the amount spent on R&D as a percentage of GDP—is between 2.8% and 2.9%. That places us fourth in the G7 behind Japan, Germany and the US, and behind Israel and Korea, so it certainly can be higher. That is why we have committed to spending £20 billion per year by the 2024-25 spending review.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, spoke of are in the review; I read it this morning. Will the Minister reassure us that the response will represent the views of the whole of Whitehall, not just the Treasury but the Department for Education and the Home Office, for the advance spending? The review says we need a workforce of several hundred thousand more by 2030, half from the UK and half from abroad. That will require a change in science education in schools and higher pay for research at British universities, while from abroad it would require the Home Office to reverse the huge increase in visa and health charges that it intends to impose up front on researchers attracted to work in this country.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Indeed. The noble Lord is right: we have identified that from the base now of roughly 1 million people in this country working in R&D, taking into account retirements, by 2027 we probably need another 380,000 R&D workers. Inevitably, a great many of those are going to need to come via the immigration route. A wide variety of visa programmes can meet that need. The Government take the view that the going-in position is that those benefiting from visas, rather than the taxpayer, should bear the immediate costs of visas and healthcare. However, that is always kept under review and, should evidence emerge that we are not getting either the quantity or the quality of integration applications, then we will take appropriate action.