R&D and innovation are core to driving sustainable economic growth and delivering the economies of the future.
For example, between 1993 and 2008, the UK market sector grew by 3% a year. Three-quarters of this growth was driven by capital investment, new technologies and innovation.
So it was great to see innovation at the heart of the Prime Minister's recent speech to the CBI conference, as well as several positive measures to support innovation in the recent Autumn Statement, including a re-commitment to increase public R&D spending to £20bn by 2024/25. Read more about the Autumn Statement and the positive and negative implications for innovation here.
But how much are we investing in R&D in the UK? Well the Prime Minister’s speech happened to coincide with the publication of the most recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) data on R&D investment in the UK – the Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) stats for 2020 as well as Business Expenditure on R&D (BERD) stats for 2021. Here we set out a
Exclusive member-only content 
