Science and Technology Committee — hearing of 14 July 2026: transcript & video

00:05 - 01:30

Speaker 2

Welcome to this morning's meeting of the Science and Technology Committee where we're undertaking a one-off evidence session about UKRI and we're very pleased to have as our witness Sir Ian Chapman, the Chief Executive of UKRI. I will start by declaring an interest. I'm an emeritus professor of engineering at Cambridge University and have held a number of UKRI grants. So, Sir Ian, of course as we all know, UKRI has just launched its new strategy and you're moving from counting inputs such as grants awarded towards clearly defined outcomes from funding. And it's also reclassifying funding across the three buckets of discovery, applied and growth-driving research investment.

Which outcomes do you want to focus UKRI on? What timescale? And how will UKRI's behavior change to prioritize outcomes? And I suppose the next part of my question is how are you going to measure and publish what you have actually achieved? These are all quite big questions, but as a start, would you like to consider those?

01:30 - 02:53

Speaker 1

They are very big questions, Lord Mair, thank you. In terms of the outcomes, if I come back to the top of our strategy, which is our mission statement, so to advance knowledge, to improve lives and to drive growth. And fundamentally everything that the organization does is pivoted around the three clauses of that mission statement. So when I talk about outcomes and generating value, securing value for the country, that value is not just economic benefit, right? There is huge value in advancing knowledge and advancing our understanding of the world.

Generally that sort of foundational breakthrough research acts as the underpinning for everything that follows. So that is an outcome in and of itself, the advancing knowledge part. Then the application and improvement of the social fabric of the country, of people's lives, of regional inequity, all of those things are also outcomes. And then there's the obvious outcome of benefit to the economy and how we help drive the economy, which then allows us to reinvest more into the research and innovation which provided that growth in the first place. So the whole thing is a symbiotic relationship.

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