Innovation
The North has nationally and internationally significant science and innovation strengths that have the potential to drive up productivity, growth and competitiveness. However, these strengths, and high levels of research and development (R&D) investment by northern businesses, are not currently matched by government investment. There is also a lack of effective coordination between the North’s innovation assets. As a result the North has a persistent and longstanding innovation performance gap with the rest of the UK.
Driving Investment and Collaboration
The current national approach to innovation funding favours more prosperous areas of the country and academic institutions.
Increasing R&D investment outside London and the South East must be a priority for partners and the Government, in order to enable delivery in key areas such as energy, growth and health.
We want to see government investment targeted through a place-based, private sector-led approach, focusing on those industries and places that have nationally and internationally competitive potential. We believe this is the only way to achieve the Government’s target of 2.4% R&D investment in the North.
This must go hand-in-hand with boosting the role of local areas in unlocking innovation, so that government funding is aligned with local business support, university and industrial investment to build innovation capacity in the right areas.
In the North this means a particular focus on clean energy and life sciences as sectors in which we are leading the way for the whole UK.
Our Ambition
The North has huge innovation potential with a huge prize to unlock. By addressing the UK’s relative weakness in industrial R&D and the excess concentration of investment in already prosperous parts of the country, we can drive up productivity and growth in what is an increasingly attractive field for investment.
In collaboration with northern businesses, research institutions, networks and hubs, national R&D agencies, and Government we aim to harness the North’s innovation strengths in a purposeful way: one that will help us solve global issues such as the climate emergency and health inequalities, while also levelling up the North’s economy.
