NHS innovation centre floated as UKRI backs Labour’s missions

An applied research centre focused on NHS transformation could be created to help align UK science more closely with the Labour government’s political missions.

With leaders at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) keen to show how its £9 billion of annual research spending is helping Keir Starmer’s administration achieve its electoral promises, one of its largest councils, Innovate UK, is discussing the creation of a new “NHS Catapult”.

This would address the “big challenges” of UK healthcare including “productivity, staffing, digitalisation [and] bureaucracy”, according to board minutes provided to Times Higher Education.

In a section of the meeting on how Innovate UK could provide a “clear narrative…for delivering industrial strategy” ahead of this spring’s spending review, board members noted how Innovate UK “needs to meet government objectives more effectively”, partly by providing “consistent messaging” about the impact of research.

With clean energy and improved NHS delivery among Labour’s five missions, it was suggested that Innovate UK could focus on “net zero and NHS as key strategic areas”. Board members discussed the “potential of an ‘NHS Catapult’,” noting that “this had previously been considered but not progressed due to government priorities at the time”.

News of the discussions, which were held in June, comes alongside UKRI’s announcement that it is hiring “challenge directors” to address each of the five “critical, complex issues identified by the UK government’ missions” – namely, “kickstarting economic growth, an NHS fit for the future, safer streets, breaking down barriers to opportunities and making Britain a clean energy superpower”.

Discussions to bring at least one of the UK’s catapults into the direct scope of Labour’s research missions might be seen in the same light, albeit the funding involved would be much greater: some £25 million is attached to the “challenge directors” scheme while Innovate UK will soon begin to talks to renew the five-year £1.6 billion funding of its nine-strong Catapult network, which expires in March 2028.

This includes the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, with research centres at the universities of Sheffield and Warwick, and the London-based Digital Catapult, with links to the universities of Bristol, Edinburgh and Surrey, and Newcastle University, among others.

The explicit alignment of research around the UK government’s missions is, however, likely to raise concerns that research funds are being overly directed by politicians rather than awarded solely on the basis of excellence as decided by researchers – known as the Haldane principle.

David Edgerton, professor of history at King’s College London, who has written about Haldane, told Times Higher Education that there was “really never such a thing as the Haldane principle”. “It emerges from time to time as something violated. The point is that government has always supported the research it has wanted to in the way it has wanted to,” he said.

“There is a separate issue which gets confused with this which is how the research councils should operate. People should stop thinking in terms of imaginary principles.”

An Innovate UK spokesman said “the future shape and scope of our catapult network is always an issue which we address based on the changing needs of – and opportunities for – innovative businesses”.

“Just like any arms-length government-funded body Innovate UK has ongoing discussions about funding priorities and how they may align with government priorities,” he explained, adding: “These decisions are made on the basis of a wide range of factors including government priorities, sector opportunities and the needs of innovative businesses.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com