UK Research and Innovation: An explainer
Laying out how this non-departmental public body works
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is one area I cover the most in my journalism. So much so that I thought I would do a quick guide that can be used as a reference - should anyone want to look at it while reading one of my pieces about the numerous studies it funds.
My eventual goal is to create a guide for every way in which taxpayer money flows from Whitehall to elsewhere (whether that’s universities/ UKRI, local government or the NHS). This can then be used alongside my Woke Waste spreadsheet.
Structure
UKRI is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) aka taxpayers.
It was once funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). However, all that changed last year when Rishi Sunak created DSIT, which is designed to bring together parts of the former BEIS and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and the Cabinet Office.
Long story short, DSIT now calls the shots - in regards to UKRI, which is designed “to cement the UK’s place as a science and technology superpower.”
Budget
UKRI has a total budget of £25.1 billion for three financial years (2022-23 to 2024-2025), which was given to it in 2022 by BEIS (with the budget now managed by DSIT). UKRI has a total of over £8.9 billion to spend for the years 2024-2025, an increase of 14 percent from its previous budget (£7.8 billion).
Subsidiaries
UKRI oversees nine councils/ research bodies. I’ve added a list of them below and also “sub councils”, too (this will grow as I explore more Woke Waste):
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Innovate UK (the UK’s national innovation agency)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Research England (responsible for funding and engaging with English higher education providers)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Here’s what the budget looks like for the nine councils (2022-2025):
Having spent a lot of time looking at some of the projects UKRI has funded, I’ve so far found that AHRC produces the most amount of Woke Waste - arguably bringing down the other bodies via association.
Have a look at some examples of research from other bodies, like MRC:
And an EPSRC grant for 2019-31:
Then compare it to some of AHRC’s projects:
Some of ESRC’s aren’t exactly Nobel-Prize winning either:
What’s especially telling is what research UKRI promotes on its news feed.
Understandably they’re much more inclined to flag “serious” studies on subjects such as leukaemia than “negotiating queer identities”.
Overall there seems to be a large range in terms of quality of UKRI studies, though they are treated as though of similar merit (The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000 has been given a £840,000 grant - the sort you might expect for something actually useful to society).
Leadership
The UKRI leadership team can be found here.
Its Chief Executive is Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge. NB. Leyser is to step down from her role next year.
Spending priorities
Although I point the finger at UKRI a lot, when highlighting Woke Waste, the Government bears equal responsibility for its spending decisions:
A quick round up
So there you have it - a brief guide that can be referred to each time I discuss UKRI (which is a lot).
To emphasise, until a few months ago I had no idea what UKRI was. It’s part of what promoted me to begin my Woke Waste series. The Government is spending huge amounts of our money via various channels that most people are completely unaware of. Here’s to hoping that can be changed.
Til next time…
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Even the science stuff is somewhat woke. The prosthetics abstract claims that lack of not-yet-invented prosthetics contravenes the human rights of people who have been blown up by land mines. As there are no minefields in the UK, and nobody has a human right to prosthetics (or any other new technologies), that's not a clear example of what the UK should be funding. Companies can easily develop and sell prosthetics.
The small mercy is that AHRC has the smallest budget of the nine and is a minnow compared with the biggest which appears to be grounded in serious and useful science. Still it looks like an easy saving of £204m. I doubt that many outside the recipients of the taxpayers’ largesse would mourn its abolition.
I would bet that there’s also some iffy stuff going on in the ESRC, but at least it’s the second smallest budget.