A majority of people want the UK’s political parties to make research and development funding a high priority in next year’s general election, according to new polling.
But neither the Conservative party nor the Labour party appear to have convinced voters that they are taking the issue seriously enough.
The Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) asked research agency Public First to poll 2,050 people as part of its long-running Discovery Decade project to explore public attitudes to the UK’s research sector.
It found that 58 per cent of those polled thought that funding R&D should be a high priority for UK political parties, but only 39 and 38 per cent respectively believed it was actually a priority for Labour and the Conservatives.
