The UK is in the midst of an election to decide our Government for the next 4-5 years. Now the parties have published their manifestos, we can start to see what the future might hold for technology & investment in the UK.
If the Conservatives pull off a big surprise and win a historic 5th election in a row, then they are promising: Increased public investment in research & development, up from £20bil to £22bil a year! They also plan to maintain R&D tax credits, and promise to invest in computer clusters, likely in support of the Quantum Computing Agenda. The manifesto promises to invest over £1.5bn in these large-scale computer clusters, assembling the processing power to take advantage of the potential of AI and supporting research. Alongside this they propose an Advanced Manufacturing Plan, providing a £4.5bn commitment to manufacturing sectors including automotive, aerospace, life sciences and clean energy. They also promise to build on the specialist ‘Catapult’ centres, to support further innovation, distributing £1.6 billion of funding across the UK by 2028. They additionally propose the public sector doubles its use of digital resources and AI in the civil service.
Labour, based on polling are the more likely winner of the election, but they are bit more modest in ambition: They proclaim they will establish a ‘National Wealth Fund’ to boost investment, capitalised with £7.3bn over the course of the next parliament (meaning roughly 4 years) including:
1. £1.5bn to new gigafactories,
2. £1bn for carbon capture,
3. £500 million for green hydrogen.
Labour plan on creating a new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, but the detail on what that means in reality is lacking. They proclaim support for technology to enable open banking and finance but again it is not clear what that means for businesses in practice. Very promising is their commitment to the ‘ambition’ of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030, but as they call it an ambition, perhaps it won’t get their wholehearted support or delivery. They too want to see adoption of AI, but the only concrete suggestion is making it easier to get planning permission for data centres, and whilst welcome, that is not a full throated commitment to meaningful investment.
Labour say they want to create a national data library to bring together existing research programmes & deliver data driven public services, but these nice soundbites do not tell us what they will do in reality. They also propose to create a new Regulatory Innovation Office to help regulators update regulation and coordinate wider issues. This may sound good to government, but this sounds a lot like more regulation and business tends to find that chilling on their investment decisions.
It's good news that both parties recognise the importance of technology, and investment, hopefully whomever is in power will support tech investment in the UK
