Recommendation 38

HM Government Acknowledged

The government partially agrees with this recommendation, and we share the Committee’s objective of supporting faster, safer and more predictable routes from research to market for innovative technologies. The Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) role is deliberately focused as it identifies and helps address regulatory barriers in priority technologies where regulation is a constraint on growth, investment and scale up. In doing so, it draws on evidence from across the innovation system, including businesses, researchers, investors, regulators and departments, to understand where regulatory complexity, fragmentation or uncertainty is slowing progress. We agree with the Committee on the importance of deliverables and both progress and impact are reported by RIO annually, with the One Year On report released in autumn 2025 and the next expected in October 2026. RIO works with regulators and lead departments in areas of focus to map the systems where this helps address fragmentation, for example, the Engineering Biology Regulators Network is leading work to map the regulatory environment for innovative cosmetics, following the RIO work in engineering biology. Many of the issues a mapping and regional support strategy exercise would cover, including finance, skills, commercialisation, scale up and local growth support, sit beyond regulation and are being addressed through wider departmental and cross government activity, including the Industrial Strategy, which this wider response has highlighted. Other activities across government include our response to the Independent Review of University Spin-outs, UKRI’s commercialisation and spin-out support, and DSIT’s wider work on regional innovation ecosystems and business support across the UK, which partially addresses the Committee’s recommendation.