For over 15 years the UK has suffered from productivity stagnation, and since the Brexit referendum, low business investment. Despite calls for ‘global Britain’ to lead on the international stage as an innovative, knowledge intensive, and technologically advanced economy, one major piece of the puzzle is missing. For decades, research and development (R&D) spending in the UK has been far too low.

Remarkably, there has not been a year since the early 1980s where the country has spent 2% or more of GDP on R&D. Last year, it was only 1.7%. The UK’s current levels of R&D spending fall significantly behind our counterparts – Germany spends 3.1% of GDP on R&D, and the US, 2.8%.

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