Regarding the Government Response to the House of Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee Report on Business-University Collaboration, PraxisUnico notes that the Government states that "Our ability to develop and commercialise new ideas, products and services is critical to our economic future and to providing jobs. Investment in our knowledge base is a crucial challenge for both government and business." We firmly agree, and would go further to say that stable investment is a crucial challenge, both in the knowledge base and people involved in the commercialisation of new ideas, products and services.
While the Government responds that it has provided a "ring-fenced £4.6 billion per annum funding for science and research programmes [which] has been protected in cash terms from 2011-2016 in real terms this does not help advance the cause of the UK as global leader in science and innovation
as Government investment in R&D has been decreasing since 2003 putting the UK below international averages and competitor nations as shown by the Campaign for Science & Engineering's recent analysis.
The response says that "Further decisions on public investment in science and innovation building on those made by this government will be made after the General Election" and we hope that the Spending Review takes into account that the UK is significantly under-invested in this respect and that initiatives such as HEIF are essential to the stability of the innovation ecosystem.
We support the statement that "The performance of universities’ knowledge exchange can be further promoted through sharing of best practice" and PraxisUnico remains committed to performing that function through its training networking and advocacy activity. We also look forward to working with HEFCE to "develop a robust Evidence based framework against a suite of key knowledge exchange activities to assess performance and identify examples of good practice."
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