Budget 2020: Doubling science spending

How should the bullish government spend its R&D billions?

Many in the science community expect great things on budget day, 11 March. Prime minister Boris Johnson has already pledged to double public R&D funding to £18 billion a year by 2024, as part of the government’s longer-term plan to increase overall R&D spending to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027.

With healthy public accounts, borrowing made easy by low cost of capital, and a Conservative promise to unlock pension funds to boost R&D investment, money for research could be easy to come by for the new chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak (pictured with Johnson).