The modern world has been shaped by the progress of science and technology. The changes that have taken place over the last 200 years have brought about an almost unimaginable improvement in human lives, such that it is sometimes easy to forget how gruelling life could be in the recent past.
Advances in medicine and agriculture have – for instance – enabled us to live longer and healthier lives. In just under two centuries, life expectancy in England has nearly doubled from 41 to 80. In that same period, child mortality has fallen from 25% to 0.4%.
As Thomas Hager, the popular science author, put it: ‘the diseases we vaccinate against now seem like harmless ghosts for the most part, robbed of their power to terrify – because vaccines have made them a thing of the past. Few people living today have ever seen a case of smallpox, or diphtheria, or polio.’
This enormous progress we have seen over the last 200 years was sparked by industrialisation. According to Professor Deirdre McCloskey, the industrial revolution led to ‘the increase of income per head by a factor of 15 or 20 since the 18th century in places like Britain…It is certainly the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants, perhaps the most important since the invention of language’.
Britain pioneered industrialisation, with advancements in areas such as infrastructure, locomotion, equipment, and communication. As such, the UK has a proud heritage of scientific and technological achievements.
We are now living in a different age. Another technological revolution is on the horizon, sometimes called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The promise and possibilities opened up by artificial intelligence (AI), as well as fields such as green (including nuclear) energy, biomedical sciences, and quantum computing will reshape economies and societies. They will also be vital tools in helping to ensure a sustainable future for the planet and for humanity.
Britain is now not in the same league as technological powerhouses such as the US and China. But while it lacks the mass of those countries, and cannot outcompete all other nations in all areas, the UK has excelled in specific areas – such as aerospace and pharmaceuticals. London has been named the digital capital of Europe, and the UK ranks fourth in the world in the Global Innovation Index – an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for, and success in, innovation.
Yet challenges remain. There is widespread acknowledgement that the UK’s science and technology ecosystem is in need of attention. The UK has struggled in scaling tech companies into global giants. There has been significant churn in Britain’s industrial strategy, and investors are sometimes not sure which direction the UK is heading in. That makes it a difficult place to do business, and may be one of the reasons business investment in R&D is so low in the UK.
If we want to know how to fix the UK’s science and technology ecosystem, what better place to start than by asking British scientists and innovators themselves?
I recently led a study at the Council on Geostrategy, an independent non-partisan think tank in Westminster, that did just this. Surveying over 60 UK innovators, scientists, technicians and policy experts, this study asked for their views on areas such as the clarity of the UK government’s vision for science and technology, access to finance, and the availability of skilled workers for research and development in science and technology.
This report found that the UK should develop a coherent cross-departmental roadmap to unlock prosperity through science and technology. It’s true there have been many recent strategies and roadmaps, but the UK’s approach has been too piecemeal and suffered from frequent churn. Britain cannot continue to hedge its bets. Labour should take bold but calculated risks based on an honest assessment of the nation’s comparative advantages and where it can gain strategic advantage. Joint responsibility for such a roadmap across different departments and with oversight from the prime minister would help the strategy to survive changes in government departments or in ministers, which has hampered UK efforts for too long.
Labour should also generate a long-term plan for British science and technology skills and talent, including reform of its visa arrangements. Such a plan should encompass early years, primary, and secondary education to ensure that the British workforce is equipped with the numerical, data, and soft skills necessary to thrive in the future economy, and to help encourage young people to pursue scientific careers through non-traditional pathways, such as apprenticeships.
And Labour should increase support for scale-ups to cross the ‘valley of death’ through improved capacity and resources for Innovate UK.
Britain can still be a key player in technological innovation, and in leading the way to a healthier and more sustainable future. But protecting and enhancing this advantage requires Britain to do some serious thinking about the role of science and technology, and how much it is willing to invest, and in which areas.
You can read the full report here: https://www.geostrategy.org.uk/research/british-science-and-technology-in-2024-implications-for-net-zero/
