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The Government had originally pledged to boost R&D investment to £22billion a year by 2024/2025. The Government also made a commitment to double spending from 0.7 percent of GDP to 2.4 percent. But Mr Sunak announced in his Autumn Budget on Wednesday that they are now only aiming for 1.1 percent, as well as delaying the £22billion by two years. Shadow Science Minister Chi Onwurah is furious with Mr Sunak’s delay.
She told Epxress.co.uk: “In his actual speech he said that every pound invested by the public sector in science attracted at least two pounds from the private sector.
“So if he even uses his own calculations that means we’re going to be losing out £8billion in private sector investment that the public sector investment would have brought in.
“That’s a huge loss in terms of science spending as well as reduced Government spending.
“What message is that saying about the Government’s commitment to becoming a science superpower whare at the first opportunity it seems that we’re delaying that.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had pledged to make Britain a “science superpower,” and the £22 billion boost to R&D was said to be a key part of achieving that goal as well as being a Brexit promise.
In an article for The Telegraph, the Prime Minister wrote: “We’re restoring Britain’s place as a scientific superpower”
“We are investing unprecedented sums, increasing government spending to £22billion for scientific research of all kinds, and we need to use those billions of state spending to leverage in the many more billions of the markets.”
But as he has delayed that promise, the Prime Minister has come under heavy fire.
Ms Onwurah told Express.co.uk: “We spend at the bottom level of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average as a proportion of our GDP on science.
“I really believe as an engineer, as a Science Minister, as an MP of an industrial area, if we’re going to compete on the global stage after Brexit, we need to have a high skill, high-value economy and that means investing in science now.”
Not only was the Shadow Minister enraged by Mr Sunak’s weak promises, but she was also unconvinced that the Government would even meet the targets they set themselves.
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