Our green hi-tech future can only be driven by science

‘Our scientists’ response to the pandemic illustrates our strength’

- Stephen Pollard

EVEN when the economy is booming and tax revenue is soaring, no Chancellor is ever going to satisfy everyone with his spending decisions.

That will be truer than ever tomorrow, when Rishi Sunak’s Budget will set the framework for the economy as we learn to live with Covid, and somehow try to balance the need to start restoring public finances with the need to make sure the economy grows fast enough to do so.

If you want to play Budget Bingo, I’d bet my mortgage on Mr Sunak telling us that “this is a Budget for growth”. But what does that actually mean?

We constantly hear from the Government about “levelling up” as the foundation of its policies, which will lead to economic growth.

But there is another vital element to that which has had far less attention. Boris Johnson wrote in June about how the UK should “regain its status as a science superpower, and in so doing to level up”.

It was – is – an ambitious but critical idea: that the niche we should occupy as a country, as we look to our post-Brexit future, should be as a global leader in Research & Development.

As the Prime Minister put it: “The UK has so many of the necessary ingredients: the academic base, a culture of innovation, the amazing data resource of the NHS, the capital markets.”