Conclusion 7

We asked about what co-ordination there is across government and with the private sector of research and development spending, and how UKRI decides what to fund.11 The Department told us that it was now ensuring spending on research was linked much more explicitly to the government’s industrial strategy. UKRI described its three aims: delivering commercial benefit; advancing curiosity-driven research that discovers new knowledge; and making social impact . It told us that all three were complementary and told us it measured the success of its infrastructure portfolio by assessing how it contributed to achieving all three aims.12