Plans to look again at the UK’s Integrated Review – the document setting the tone for our foreign policy and defence priorities – were announced during the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss. Picked up by the current Prime Minister, the refreshed framework for the UK, published in early April 2023, will have implications for universities and the wider Research and Development (R&D) sector that will last far longer than Liz Truss did in No. 10.
The original Integrated Review of 2021 put research and innovation at the centre of the country’s strategy for statecraft – the way in which nations secure their economic and political standing in an increasingly competitive world. Two years on, in the face of war in Europe and new geopolitical tensions, science remains high on the agenda in the 2023 update.
For the UK to prosper, government will focus on areas of strategic advantage in R&D, namely:
- AI;
- semiconductors;
- quantum technologies;
- future telecommunications; and
- engineering biology.
