The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves MP, will present the Autumn Budget 2024 to Parliament on 30 October. Ahead of this anticipated event, AIRTO – the Association of Innovation, Research & Technology Organisations – has put forward representation to His Majesty’s Treasury calling for growth to be enabled by applied research, development and innovation, highlighting the key policy interventions needed for a clear, consistent strategy to address immediate economic and societal challenges, and build a strong, energy-secure Net Zero economy, including:

• Making closer-to-market innovation across the UK an integral part of the new Industrial Strategy by re-balancing public funding for research, development and innovation (RDI) to provide more support for the close-to-market innovation infrastructure for key sectors and industries, to help reduce the cost and time to translate technologies to market.
• Building on the UK’s world-leading RDI infrastructure by investing in the innovation ecosystem by creating a recapitalisation mechanism for non-profit distributing Innovation, Research & Technology (IRT) sector organisations which do not have recourse to share holder funding for investment in buildings and facilities.
• Instilling confidence for industry in the UK’s resilience and consistency, to make critical research, development and innovation investment in the UK by committing to clear, consistent, and ambitious long-term government policies and funding.
• Prioritising people and skills via development of a comprehensive ‘workforce plan’ for RDI in the UK, encompassing education and skills, and involving the key players from industry, the IRT sector, and academia.
• Achieving immediate short-term growth through targeted research and development by maintaining current funding for public funding of RDI.
• Ensuring sustained and growing long-term investment in R&D, advancing beyond 3% for Gross Expenditure (public and private) on R&D as a percentage of GDP by 2030 to sit in the top quartile of OECD nations.

Read the full submission here.

About AIRTO
AIRTO is the Association of Innovation, Research and Technology Organisations. Its membership comprises approximately sixty of the principal organisations operating in the UK’s innovation, research and technology (IRT) sector. The IRT sector has a combined turnover of £6.9Bn, employing over 57,000 scientific and technical staff (equivalent to the academic staffing of the Russell Group of universities) and, for comparison, it is significantly larger than the network of Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany both in size and scope of activities. The sector contributes £34Bn to UK GDP. AIRTO’s members work at the interface between academia and industry, for both private and public sector clients in the UK and overseas. Members cover a very wide range of industries from for example, agriculture and food, pharma and bio, energy generation and distribution, manufacturing and the built environment. They may be industry specific or have cross-sectorial expertise. Members include Independence Research and Technology Organisations, Catapult Centres, Public Research Establishments, National Laboratories, university Technology Transfer Offices and privately held innovation organisations.