Science diplomacy

The Committee recognises that Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) spending has been reduced to allow the wider defence budget to be increased, but highlights the risks in making deep cuts to ODA for Research and Development (R&D). The UK has been shortsighted in making cuts to this area as part of its wider cuts to overseas aid. Along with its spending on health, a much larger part of the aid budget, ODA for R&D is an investment that can greatly benefit the UK in terms of preventing disease outbreaks and assisting future science discoveries, as well as building important science diplomacy links. While recognising the financial and political constraints around restoring ODA spend, we call on the government to reconsider when it comes to R&D spend. The cuts constitute a missed opportunity for the UK to strengthen its global leadership in science and technology, with the risk that this spot may be taken up by competitors. The impact on our relationships and reputation will resonate for years to come. (Conclusion, Paragraph 19)

In its response to this report, the government should set out its assessment of the impact of ODA cuts on international science collaboration, including on areas such as the International Science Partnership Framework. While recognising the pressures and trade- offs facing public finances, we urge the government to restore ODA funding for research and development across departments, given the clear strategic, diplomatic and scientific benefits of doing so. (Recommendation, Paragraph 20)

The UK’s Global Talent Fund is a welcome initiative but lacks ambition and scale. It fails to address the high upfront costs faced by researchers coming to the UK, which our witnesses consistently identified as a key deterrent for science and tech talent. It is short-sighted to promote the UK as a destination for global talent while retaining financial barriers that make it less competitive than its peers. (Conclusion, Paragraph 27) 37

The UK-US pharmaceutical agreement has secured benefits— notably exemption from tariffs—but it also appears to have involved significant commitments affecting core elements of UK domestic policy. Changes relating to medicine spending, NICE thresholds, and the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth (VPAG) are key to UK health policy, and it is disappointing that it is external pressure rather than discussion within the UK that seems to have led to change. It also raises the question of how far the UK can rely on its strategic relationship with the US. Although the global nature of the pharmaceutical sector inevitably means that trade negotiations will have an impact, decisions about NHS spending, pricing, and access to medicines should primarily be driven by the needs of UK patients, balanced with the sustainability of the life sciences sector. (Conclusion, Paragraph 35)

In its response to this report, the government should set out how commitments made under the UK-US agreement will deliver tangible benefits for NHS patients and system sustainability, rather than simply improving commercial conditions for industry. It should commit to ensuring that UK medicine policy will remain sovereign, transparent, and grounded in domestic priorities, and ensure that future trade negotiations do not unduly determine core elements of UK health policy. The government should also set out how it determined that 12% of NHS spending on medicines, as set out in the UK-US agreement, is the correct amount. (Recommendation, Paragraph 36) Strategy

The UK has big ambitions for science diplomacy, and a strong research base, but these are not matched by strategy or delivery. The government has not articulated a coherent strategic framework setting out priority partners, technologies, or intended outcomes of its partnerships, but instead seems to take an opportunistic approach to international agreements. Without such a framework, the UK risks substituting activity for strategy, undermining both domestic outcomes and its credibility as an international partner. (Conclusion, Paragraph 47)

The Government should move beyond its opportunistic approach to international agreements in science and technology. It should, in its response to this report, commit to establishing and publishing clear criteria for decisions on its science partnerships. This should include explicit strategies for engagement with the US, the EU, Commonwealth partners, other middle powers, and competitor states such as China and Russia. Within this framework, the government should set out: 38 • How it intends to define and pursue technology sovereignty, including the balance between domestic capability, bilateral dependencies with trusted partners, and participation in wider networks of allied nations; • Its strategy for talent development and recruitment, including the balance between building domestic capability and attracting international expertise; and • Its approach to risk, including the degree to which UK intellectual property should be protected in collaborative arrangements, and the extent to which the UK faces technological competition or hostile activity from partner and competitor states. Based on this, the UK Science and Technology Network should be given a more significant role in setting direction, tasked with reviewing and rationalising its country portfolio in line with these priorities. (Conclusion, Paragraph 48)

For the six frontier technologies in the Digital and Technologies Sector Plan, and for space, the government should bring forward detailed, cross-government strategies accompanied by clear delivery plans. The forthcoming Plan for Space provides an important opportunity to do this. These strategies should set out national capability priorities, funding commitments, responsible departments, and measurable targets, as well as which technologies should be controlled by government, by UK industry and institutions, by non-UK firms operating in the UK, and whether our goals in each are leadership, competitiveness, or capacity. The strategies should move beyond high-level ambition to provide a clear framework for execution, ensuring that investment is targeted, decisions are prioritised, and the UK is positioned as a credible and consistent international partner. (Recommendation, Paragraph 49)

We support the principles behind the government and UKRI’s efforts to reform research funding, streamlining and coordinating work across its councils, and deploying it to drive economic growth. However, this should be carefully managed to take into account the impact on the UK’s international commitments and reputation. The welcome emphasis on achieving economic growth should not be at the expense of the longer- term, curiosity-driven work that is needed to drive scientific progress, and should not be allowed to damage the UK’s international standing or wider science diplomacy. Science diplomacy should be explicitly incorporated into UKRI’s remit, to help ensure that its funding decisions, programmes and international partnerships are aligned with the UK’s strategic objectives. (Conclusion, Paragraph 50) 39

We visited the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2025 and were greatly impressed not only by the work being carried out there to push back the boundaries of human knowledge, but by the scope and depth of the international collaboration it involves. We hoped in this report to celebrate the appointment of the first British head of CERN for three decades as a major win for science diplomacy, particularly after the UK’s exit from the EU. Unfortunately, this success has been overshadowed by events. Marking the beginning of the director general’s term by abruptly pulling promised funding from a planned upgrade at CERN—threatening the project’s future—displays a fundamental lack of joined-up thinking and potentially jeopardises the UK’s relationship with the EU on issues of science and innovation. The hasty and abrupt way the decision was communicated compounds the damage to the UK’s standing with its international partners. (Conclusion, Paragraph 51) Sovereignty

As geopolitics shifts, the UK is in a global race for sovereign capability across a range of technologies, whether it acknowledges it or not. Achieving sovereign capability requires the government to be clear about the trade-offs and risks involved and realistic about what is achievable. Setting an ambition for what the government considers sovereign capability, in what it considers to be key sectors, is a necessary precursor for a joined-up strategy to develop key technologies. Limiting transparency around the UK’s ambitions for sovereign capabilities is unlikely to be hiding anything from competitors such as Russia and China, but it is leaving UK tech companies in the dark. (Conclusion, Paragraph 60)

The US’s decision to restrict some advanced AI models should be a powerful reminder to the UK government that it may not be able to count even on its allies for access to technologies. Leverage may not be enough to guarantee sovereignty. As AI and other technologies develop fast and in unpredictable directions—and play an increasingly central role in national security—it is essential to ensure that the UK cannot be cut off from key technologies at the whim of a foreign government. This could mean diversifying partnerships to ensure multiple points of access where possible, and thinking creatively about sources of leverage outside a specific tech stack, or outside tech altogether. (Conclusion, Paragraph 61)

The government should set out how it intends to protect its sovereignty in AI, in particular, in the face of fast-changing geopolitical and technological developments. The government should work with industry and academia to define sovereign capability for the five critical technologies outlined in its 2025 Science and Technology Framework. This should include setting a clear and consistent definition of sovereignty, supported by detailed analysis of 40 technology supply chains to identify critical components, dependencies, and areas of comparative UK strength. This should be published—or at least shared with the Intelligence and Security Committee—and used to guide investment, procurement, and research funding decisions. (Recommendation, Paragraph 62)

While the own–collaborate–access framework provides a useful foundation for prioritising the UK’s approach to critical technologies, it is currently applied at too high a level to guide effective decision-making. Holding an ambition for an entire technology to be in the “own” category, as the government currently does in relation to quantum, may not be feasible. (Conclusion, Paragraph 63)

The Government should operationalise the own–collaborate–access framework by applying it at the level of specific capabilities within technology stacks, rather than to technologies as a whole. It should publish assessments setting out which components the UK seeks to own, where it should prioritise collaboration, and where access will be required. These priorities should be aligned with the broader international strategy for science and tech, as outlined in the previous chapter. (Recommendation, Paragraph 64)

The government’s move towards prioritising specific technologies in sectors such as space represents a welcome shift away from a broad- based approach. However, its current approach to specialisation remains high level and insufficiently defined in areas we examined, including space and quantum. The rationale underpinning these priorities is not clearly articulated, and there is limited transparency about how decisions have been made. As a result, it is difficult to assess whether the selected areas reflect the UK’s comparative strengths or maximise long-term strategic advantage. (Conclusion, Paragraph 68)

The government should provide greater clarity on its approach to technological specialisation. This should include setting out, in specific terms, the capabilities and sub-sectors it intends to prioritise within broad fields such as space and quantum. It should also publish the criteria and evidence base used to inform these decisions, including how considerations such as market opportunity, existing strengths, sovereign capability, and international competition have been weighed. Greater transparency would strengthen confidence in these choices and help ensure that public and private investment is directed effectively. (Recommendation, Paragraph 69)

The UK excels at generating early-stage research and innovation but falls short in translating this strength into the growth and scaling of high-tech domestic companies. UK-developed innovations are too often commercialised overseas, with high-growth firms in strategic sectors such as quantum and space forced to go overseas to scale. DeepMind is 41 perhaps the clearest example: had the UK been able to provide the scale-up investment required, the company might not have been sold to Google, and the UK would not need to rely on overseas firms for its generative AI capabilities. This long-standing issue has become urgent as geopolitical shifts, combined with leaps in technology, focus attention on the question of technology sovereignty. It is unclear what the government’s objectives are in relation to capital markets and the commercialisation of innovation: whether it seeks to retain and scale leading companies domestically or is content for them to be acquired overseas, provided the UK shares in the returns. (Conclusion, Paragraph 79)

The failure to scale companies reflects longstanding and deep-seated weaknesses in availability of laterstage capital, including a shortage of large, specialist funds and a limited pool of investors with the technical expertise and risk appetite to lead deeptech investments. The government is taking steps to address the issue, but they may not be enough. Public investment institutions such as British Business Bank play an important role in supporting UK tech but are too limited in scale and coordination to mobilise private capital at the level needed. Recent reforms, including the Mansion House agenda, have the potential to unlock substantial new capital, but their impact will take time to materialise, and without systemic reform they are unlikely to resolve the scaleup gap on their own. (Conclusion, Paragraph 80)

The government should encourage the growth of specialist funds with deep sectoral expertise, including by supporting team development, attracting international talent, and enabling experienced technical leaders to transition into investment roles. The government should use its own procurement more strategically to support innovative companies, providing them with early revenue, validation, and a pathway to scale within the UK, particularly in strategically important sectors. We encourage the government to move ahead with its proposed dedicated unit to increase procurement of innovation. (Recommendation, Paragraph 81) Research security

The UK’s research base is operating in an increasingly contested global environment. The risks to research security are growing but the UK’s response is insufficiently developed. Though the recent breach at UK Biobank illustrated how research collaborations can be exploited by hostile actors, the government’s current “actor agnostic” approach has not translated into clear, practical guidance for those managing these risks on the ground. Too much responsibility is placed on individual academics, who do not have the resources to make informed judgements on national security risks. (Conclusion, Paragraph 89) 42

The government should provide clearer and more detailed guidance on how institutions should approach research security, aligned with its wider strategy for international collaboration, as set out in chapter 1. This should include better information-sharing between government and institutions to support decision-making and a review of how central advisory functions such as the Research Collaboration Advice Team are operating and how they can be strengthened to better support researchers in navigating security risks. (Recommendation, Paragraph 90)

While targeted measures to strengthen research security are important, they cannot be considered in isolation from the wider structural pressures facing UK universities. Financial constraints, reliance on international student income and weaknesses in the domestic talent pipeline in key subjects such as physics and engineering all shape institutional incentives. Without addressing these underlying factors, efforts to improve research security may be limited in impact. Building a clearer evidence base on the domestic talent pipeline in critical disciplines is essential. (Conclusion, Paragraph 91)

In its response to this report, the government should set out a clear, cross-departmental strategy for ensuring a secure and sustainable domestic talent pipeline in the key scientific and technological capabilities it has identified as critical to the UK’s future prosperity and security. This should include an assessment of current and projected skills needs, and should set out how the government will determine and maintain an appropriate balance between domestic and international talent in these areas, ensuring that reliance on overseas recruitment does not undermine the development of domestic capability. (Conclusion, Paragraph 92) 43