UK manufacturing and R&D to benefit from new £360m investment

On 4 March, ahead of the Spring Budget, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, announced a significant investment package for the UK life sciences and manufacturing sectors.

A total of £360 million is set to boost UK manufacturing and R&D. Joint government and industry investment of £92 million will help to expand facilities to manufacture life-saving medicines and diagnostics products.

A sum of £7.5 million will support two pharmaceutical companies investing a combined £84 million to expand their manufacturing plants in the UK. One of the pharmaceutical companies, Almac, in Northern Ireland, produces drugs to treat diseases such as cancer, heart disease and depression, HM Treasury stated.

“We are sticking with our plan by backing the industries of the future with millions of pounds of investment to make the UK a world leader in manufacturing,” Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt declared.

Advancing the UK’s life sciences sector

The Chancellor also confirmed that companies will soon be able to apply for a share of the £520 million funding for life sciences manufacturing announced at Autumn Statement. According to HM Treasury, the fund is designed “to build resilience for future health emergencies such as influenza pandemics and capitalise on the UK’s world-leading research and development.”

Steve Bates, OBE, CEO of the BioIndustry Association (BIA), shared that highlights from the Budget for UK life sciences include “the new expert advisory panel for the HMRC [which] is a smart way to maximise the efficiency of R&D tax relief support for life science innovators.”

Bates also commented on the R&D tax relief regime: “Successive policy changes to the R&D tax regime over the past several years have created uncertainty and additional red-tape for SMEs, putting at risk the UK’s reputation as a location for innovative businesses. We are therefore looking forward to a period of stability and bedding-in for the new rules legislated for in the Finance Bill.

“However, with British companies being at the cutting-edge of global R&D, HMRC will need help to ensure the R&D tax relief claims process is streamlined and robust, making it straightforward and quick for genuine innovative companies and catching fraudulent ones. The new HMRC-industry panel is a smart way to deliver industry expertise and feedback into the HMRC’s vital work to make the UK business environment as innovation-friendly as possible.”

Funding sustainable innovations

In a separate statement, HM Treasury confirmed that AstraZeneca intends to invest a total of £650 million in the UK. The first portion of the investment comprises of £450 million to research, develop and manufacture vaccines at AstraZeneca’s facility in Speke, Liverpool. With power being supplied by renewable energy, the site will be operationally Net Zero. A further £200 million investment will expand the company’s presence in Cambridge, employing 1,000 people.

The ministry confirmed that AstraZeneca’s investment decision is dependent on agreement between the UK Government and third parties, as well as successful completion of regulatory processes.

Joint investment to accelerate UK sustainable biomanufacturing

Supporting UK investment in AI

A separate announcement by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) declared that an investment £100 million by the UK government was allocated to The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton remarked: “It is particularly encouraging that this budget is announcing funding for SME upskilling and ongoing funding for the Alan Turing Institute”. 

“It is important to invest in AI in a moment when the technology is moving so fast, both because there is a need to understand it better, and because we need to discover new ways to put it to good use… so I hope that part of the budget is dedicated to that purely scientific question. As we need to diversify the number of research groups engaging with the technical side of AI, it would also be good if the investment was not concentrated solely on one institution,” noted Professor Nello Cristianini, Professor of AI, University of Bath.

Overall, these investments are “very welcome”, Dr Daniel Rathbone, Interim Executive Director, Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) commented, because it shows the UK government continues to recognise that “science and innovation are powerful drivers of economic growth”.