It’s a relief we’ve rejoined Horizon, but it is certainly not a victory of post-Brexit Britain
A deal with Horizon was initially almost inevitable and would have secured science funding – until post-Brexit UK relations with the EU erupted over Northern Ireland, writes Zoe Peden
There aren’t many examples where taking two steps back before one step forward is deemed a success. But that happened last week, as the UK heartily cheered its reentry into the Horizon Europe programme, the European Union’s flagship science and research scheme.
Horizon is the largest research collaboration on earth, providing £85bn of grant support to academia’s weird, wonderful and (in the short-term) commercially unviable inventions. The programme comprises the EU countries, Israel, New Zealand and Norway and is based on the wise principle that good science is done best when done together, regardless of geography.
Horizon, and its sibling Copernicus which gives countries access to satellite data, became bargaining chips during the Brexit negotiations. Britain’s reentry into both schemes seemed a fait accompli until the rows over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Despite UK universities being some of the biggest beneficiaries of the Horizon programme – since 2014 our researchers received €7 bn, the most of any nation other than Germany – we left in 2020 and have only just rejoined.
This was not some bureaucratic exit from a nebulous geopolitical scheme. Researchers up and down the country were left out in the cold, their funding disappearing at a moment’s notice. People had to give up their lives’ work, or leave the UK in search of financial support to continue. The financial, scientific, and reputational damage will be hard to undo.
This is just the latest setback for a country experiencing decades of technological and economic decline since World War II. Patriots might point to Britain’s invention of the internet as proof of our digital credentials, but if anything this should be a mark of shame; it was the Americans, with their deep pockets and hunger for risk, who commercialised our invention and used it to turbocharge their economy. Today, we can’t even convince our own companies to list domestically, with ARM choosing the New York Stock Exchange despite courting from the UK government. Proponents of “Silicon Roundabout” – if anyone still uses that moniker – talk about Britain’s world-beating fintech, and yet even in that one vertical we’re so proud of, the US dominates.
This Horizon news is a relief because it reaffirms how much respect our scientists deserve. It’s here that our economy might be able to find its edge. Governmental funding for research allows scientists to take risks without getting bogged down by the kinds of commercial constraints that can get in the way of good ideas. Now if we can just convince our universities to stop taking 30 per cent of equity in the ideas they foster (and move towards the 10 per cent stake taken by the likes of Harvard, MIT and Stanford), we might soon see a generation of scientists in Britain building transformative, sustainable businesses that are attractive to the deep-pocketed venture capital and private equity communities here.
This type and amount of catalytic funding is crucial if we want to see more innovative companies at scale with deep, defensible moats.
We have such a strong scientific heritage in this country: Newton, Darwin, Hawking, Berners-Lee. With Horizon back in place, combined with the right talent, investment and professional service ingredients that can be found in London, there might just be some cause for optimism about British science and technology.
Then perhaps, we can just take two steps forward, for a change.