The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has today published a report which warns the Government that the UK’s failure to retain and scale its science and technology companies has now reached crisis point and is causing the UK economy to bleed out.
'Bleeding to death: the science and technology growth emergency' argues that without urgent and radical reform, the Government risks acting too late to fix long-standing failures to scale, to retain the economic benefits of R&D in the UK, and to seize the enormous opportunities for technological and economic growth that are currently slipping through its fingers.
The report cites the work of David Connell (CBR Senior Research Fellow) and Faculty Professor of Corporate Law and Governance Bobby Reddy, published by the Cambridge Judge Business School (JBS). Their report 'Selling less of the family silver: boosting UK growth' was published in July 2024.
Their work argued that revenue-backed, rather than venture-backed companies, often retain a greater level of founder control, and have 'anchor customers' domestically, which give the company significant repeat business in the UK and can therefore help retain these companies domestically. Their Report makes practical recommendations to overhaul the approach to Government support for both revenue-backed and venture-backed businesses.