Avoiding the rush: Wellcome sets out principles for devolving R&D
The initial government statement on “rewiring the state,” released shortly after Andy Burnham took office, promised to devolve more innovation funding to mayors.
Since then it has been announced that the transfer of authority over the Local Innovation Partnership Fund will be moved up to 2028, and that £1bn of UKRI’s budget will be earmarked in some way for clusters.
The question is then whether the upcoming Rewiring the State delivery plan will simply celebrate these actions, or go further. Given that the innovation chapter is substantially being written by mayoral authorities, the feeling seems to be that there is more distance yet to travel.
With this in mind, different actors in the research system have been setting out their thoughts, typically with a steer to government that there are important aspects of the R&D system which need to be overseen at a national level. We’ve covered the Russell Group’s perspective previously, and now Wellcome has released a set of principles for the regional devolution of research and development.
The importance of national and international scale is emphasised throughout:
“National, and even international, competition is necessary to ensure that the best applicant-led proposals are funded. Excellence is driven by competition and this is a common approach to discovery research around the world.”
Wellcome additionally suggests that devolved authorities should use the funding which comes their way to help them compete for national discovery research funding:
“Depending on the region, that could mean incentivising researcher applications to certain calls, investing in people-based schemes, or mechanisms to attract researchers from across the UK and globally.”
It also argues that decisions about nationally significant infrastructure must be taken at the national level – though regions should have a clearer role in such decision-making.
Don’t rush
UKRI’s board has previously been told that the Local Innovation Partnership Fund, which the funder currently oversees, has required “significant on-the-ground engagement to build capability, governance structures and partnerships,” with more resources needing to be committed than was originally anticipated.
Despite this, and before any programme evaluation had been released, the government announced that it would be fully devolved to mayoral authorities – and then the new Prime Minister moved this handover date forward by a couple of years.
Wellcome’s new principles reflect concerns about local capacity to manage innovation funding programmes, suggesting that the most advanced settlements should go to regions that have demonstrated capability to deploy them:
“Likewise, regions that have not demonstrated the necessary R&D capability should not receive R&D funding in a rush to devolution.”
The research sector – as well as the responsible government department, BIST – is also keen to ensure that money devolved for research and innovation is ringfenced to be spent on research and innovation. Wellcome calls for such devolved funding to “retain a clear and protected purpose,” one which unlocks additional private investment and thus grows the total amount spent on R&D, rather than simply reassigning control over it.