Industrial strategy needs skills roadmap, says campaigner

The Department for Education should put together a 10-year skills roadmap to ensure more people can participate in science and benefit from the uplift in R&D spending, the executive director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering has said.

The roadmap should sit alongside the delivery plan being developed by the government to increase total R&D spending to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027 and to 3 per cent in the longer term, Sarah Main said. She was speaking in her inaugural lecture as honorary professor of science policy at University College London on 6 March.

“If we want to have the people to sustain this additional, huge growth in research and innovation we need to make sure that there is encouragement and provision to participate,” Main said. “And I think that this is quite a political challenge because this requires for the industrial strategy to have a champion not just in the secretary of state for business and the chancellor, but in the secretary of state for education.”