Innovation, devolution, Andrea Jenkyns

We won’t see the full extent of Andy Burnham’s devolution ambitions until later this autumn – but the Rewiring the State blueprint from earlier this summer is quite the statement of intent.

For the research sector, the promise to substantially increase the share of later-stage innovation funding which is routed through local government is the headline takeaway for now, with implications on the policy side around how UKRI’s “bucket three” is deployed and whether Innovate UK’s freshly minted new strategy is already in need of a shake-up.

Those thinking about the shape of the future might want to cast their eyes over how devolution has already played out in semi-comparable areas of public spending, to the extent that these exist. One of the few we might draw inspiration from is adult skills funding, which despite being a shamefully underfunded area still represents more than a billion pounds of government investment each year, and is increasingly in the hands of local and combined authorities.

Here, the real story of interest is what has been going on in Greater Lincolnshire, where Reform UK mayor Andrea Jenkyns responded to the advent of local control by announcing that public funding for English as a second language (ESOL) would come to an end.

(Readers from the higher education sector may remember Jenkyns’ short tenure as skills minister in the Liz Truss administration, which was characterised by jeremiads against “Harry Potter studies”.)

This in itself should focus minds; the applicability to innovation funding is not hard to see, given similar ideological contestation in many areas of research and infrastructure, from green technology to data centres. Given power over (elements of) bucket three, mayors and other local leaders can be expected to at times deploy this through the lens of party politics – it would be foolish to anticipate otherwise.

But the more notable development, perhaps, was when earlier this summer Westminster intervened to partially block the move, requiring all devolved authorities to adopt centrally mandated criteria for adult skills course eligibility rather than choose by themselves who can qualify.

The Whitehall need to ensure consistency is one reason why English devolution has been tentative in the past. Burnham and Number 10 North might be committed to overriding this instinct, but how the rewiring subsequently plays out – for example, if a mayoral authority was to decide that there is an area of the local innovation ecosystem which it does not wish to see flourish – remains to be seen. The intricacies of how legislation is drafted over the next couple of years will be important here too.

Things cut both ways too – Reform mayor versus Labour Westminster is not the only dynamic to think about. An equally likely future scenario is one in which central government steps in to tell local leaders what not to fund.

You may notice that in all this we have neglected the role of a mediating arm’s length body in the process – one that can prioritise what is best for UK innovation and strive to remain out of politics. Under the Rewiring the State blueprint, the standing of ALBs is left open to a rethink:

“We will adopt a similar approach to arm’s length bodies, taking a serious look at whether individual arm’s length body responsibilities and funding should be transferred to local leaders, or returned to ministerial departments, unless ministers proactively decide that it is necessary to retain them externally. We will also look to reduce the number of duplicative policy, communications, and strategy teams in arm’s length bodies, which are not reporting into accountable local leaders or ministers.”

Now, UKRI would not be a natural starting point for closer ministerial control, given the well-established need for the research system’s independence from government.

But the important consideration to keep in mind, as we wait impatiently for more of the detail, is that devolution will indeed shake up how power is exercised across England – but will also infuse political contestation into elements of the system in ways that are hard to predict. 

Spotted a politician meddling in the research system? Or a blurry line between academia and government? Email the man himself: haldane [at] researchagenda [dot] news