Senior sector figures from research, the NHS, industry, private capital and academia set out why Britain's scientific strength is not translating into economic growth - and what needs to change. A shorter version appears as a letter in the Times.
Britain is a global leader in scientific discovery. It is far less successful at turning that strength into economic growth and social benefit.
The UK’s research base remains one of its greatest national assets. Its universities and life sciences sector continue to produce advances of global significance. But knowledge creation alone does not generate prosperity. That strength cannot be taken for granted: long-term competitiveness depends on sustaining the foundations of discovery research. Yet too often, the commercial rewards of publicly funded British science are realised overseas rather than at home. Recent analysis from the National Centre for Universities and Business highlights the weakness. Business-led commercialisation - the bridge between discovery and economic value - remains under strain. UK business R&D spending fell by 6 per cent in real terms between 2021 and 2023 - the steepest contraction among major economies, while Korea, Japan and the US accelerated. The result is a widening gap between scientific excellence and economic impact.
The UK does not lack scientific excellence; it lacks the ability to scale it. The problem is not a shortage of ideas, institutions or talent. It is a shortage of commercial capability, innovation leadership and system coherence. Britain has too few people with experience of building and scaling science-based businesses, and too many initiatives without clear coordination. For companies, particularly smaller ones, the system can be difficult to navigate and slow to support growth.
If the UK is serious about global competitiveness, particularly in life sciences, it must be more selective and more disciplined. That means focusing on a smaller number of areas where it has genuine comparative advantage, and aligning public and private investment behind them. Britain’s strength in fundamental biology and data should translate more consistently into commercially successful therapies and technologies, rather than dissipating across too many disconnected efforts.
Central to this is the role of the National Health Service. The NHS is not just a delivery system for care; it is one of the UK’s most powerful, and underused, innovation assets. Used well, it can provide the data, patient access and real-world environment needed to develop, test and adopt new treatments at scale.
This requires a shift in approach. Clinical research, evaluation and adoption need to function as a more integrated system, with clearer and faster routes from trial to routine use. The UK has the foundations to lead in real-world and digitally enabled clinical research, but only if its health system is organised to support innovation as well as care.
The prize is not only commercial. Poor health is one of the largest drags on UK economic performance, keeping people out of work and reducing productivity. A more effective life sciences and health innovation system could help address this directly through earlier diagnosis, better prevention, faster trials and more targeted treatments. Recent estimates suggest the economic value of reducing ill-health through innovation could reach £278bn — close to 10 per cent of UK GDP. The gains would be twofold: stronger growth and a healthier population. Prevention should not sit at the margins of industrial policy; it belongs at its centre.
Artificial intelligence makes this agenda more urgent. The UK will not outspend the US or out-compete China in building new models. Its advantage lies instead in applying AI within sectors where it already has deep institutional strength, high-quality data and trusted environments. Health is one of those sectors. Here, the UK’s combination of clinical depth and unified health data provides a distinctive platform for deployment. But without maintaining public trust and ensuring the right infrastructure, governance and routes to deployment, that opportunity will remain underexploited.
The case for reform is therefore straightforward. Britain needs a smaller number of clear innovation priorities, pursued consistently and at sufficient scale to matter. It needs a simpler support architecture that businesses can navigate with confidence. And it needs institutions with clear accountability for turning scientific strength into investable opportunity, particularly in areas such as clinical research, market access and scale-up support.
That means being more disciplined about what government is trying to achieve, and more realistic about how innovation ecosystems actually work. Businesses do not invest on the basis of ambition alone. They invest where policy is stable, routes to market are visible, regulation is navigable and there is a credible path to return. If the UK wants more business R&D, it must become easier to build, test, manufacture and sell here.
Some alignment is beginning to emerge across life sciences and health research, investment and industry. The opportunity now is to turn that into a system that works in practice.
Britain faces a choice. It can continue to celebrate its excellence in discovery while allowing too much of the value to flow elsewhere. Or it can build a system that converts scientific strength into sustained economic growth — and, in doing so, reinforce the foundations of future discovery.
- Professor Andrew Morris CBE PMedSci, President, Academy of Medical Sciences
- Professor Patrick Chinnery FMedSci FRS, Executive Chair, Medical Research Council
- Tom Adeyoola, Executive Chair, Innovate UK
- David Brown, Chief Business Officer, Health Data Research UK and NCUB
- Rosalind Campion, Chief Executive, Academy of Medical Sciences
- Vanessa Colomar, Partner, Dalloway
- Professor Sir Mike Ferguson CBE FMedSci FRS, Regius Professor of Life Sciences, University of Dundee
- Dr Joe Marshall, Chief Executive, National Centre for Universities and Business
- Professor Iain McInnes CBE FMedSci, Vice-Principal, University of Glasgow
- Dr Ruth McKernan CBE FMedSci, Operating Partner, SV Health Investors
- Lord O’Shaughnessy, Newmarket Strategy, Health Data Research UK and Cambridge University Health Partners
- David Probert, Chief Executive Officer, University College London Hospitals (UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust
- Andy Richards CBE, Chairman, Arecor Therapeutics, Owlstone Medical and RNAvate
- Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell FMedSci FRS, NCUB and University of Manchester
- Dr Graham Spittle CBE, Chair, Rosalind Franklin Institute
- Sir Jon Symonds, CBE FMedSci, Chair, GSK
- Professor Irene Tracey CBE FMedSci FRS, Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford