Robin Bisson

Delighted to find out that Andy Burnham isn't the only minister with industrial trade press pedigree Turns out the science minister Chris McDonald was editor of Millenium Steel: "the leading review of advanced process technology worldwide" His ministerial interests say he's stepped down though :(

If there was any doubt about the pressure govt can put on major research funding decisions, I think this story helps put that to bed There has been a lot of heat about the UK pulling funding for the LHCb at Cern. Brian Cox has been involved, and I hear govt was not expecting the level of backlash

The larger issue was budget constraints: UKRI only has £265m to spend annually on the Infrastructure Fund in the current SR, rather than the £470m it said it would have needed Ministers would have known this but still chose to fast track a quantum project with explicit links to the tech sector

If there was any doubt about the pressure govt can put on major research funding decisions, I think this story helps put that to bed There has been a lot of heat about the UK pulling funding for the LHCb at Cern. Brian Cox has been involved, and I hear govt was not expecting the level of backlash

The NCF was announced in March “to deliver an approximately six-fold increase in cryo-capacity, most notably for scale-up by quantum computing companies like global leaders PsiQuantum” PsiQuantum is a US-based company aiming to build the first “commercially useful” quantum computer

If there was any doubt about the pressure govt can put on major research funding decisions, I think this story helps put that to bed There has been a lot of heat about the UK pulling funding for the LHCb at Cern. Brian Cox has been involved, and I hear govt was not expecting the level of backlash

The LHCb was one of 4 projects to have funding via UKRI's Infrastructure Fund pulled in late 2025. Together, the projects lost a promised £280m At the same time, it turns out govt had injected a 'wildcard' project worth over £50m to the Infrastructure Fund and that project was funded within months

So this @foundscitech.bsky.social event last night on devolved R&D was pretty newsy, and came ahead of an 'innovation nation summit' in Manchester tomorrow Gordon Brown has co-organised the summit and Andy Burnham is expected to give a speech Some things of note:

3. While there was general consensus that funding for discovery research should remain centralised, @jessicacorner.bsky.social, of Research England no less, suggested there could scope for more localism "Some of it could be strategically positioned in strong places", she said

So this @foundscitech.bsky.social event last night on devolved R&D was pretty newsy, and came ahead of an 'innovation nation summit' in Manchester tomorrow Gordon Brown has co-organised the summit and Andy Burnham is expected to give a speech Some things of note:

1. There will be a 'rewiring the state' white paper by Christmas and it will have a chapter on innovation, @richardaljones.bsky.social said He said “people will be surprised about how fast and how seriously this is being driven” So more than just devolving the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund?

One of the best lines from this event last night was @richardaljones.bsky.social saying: "The story of London is a story of a city trying to transition from its smokestack financial services industries into modern knowledge-based AI and life sciences, and frankly, you've done a good job"

Surprisingly, it turns out the UK already has access to the EU’s Scaleup Europe Fund, which is on track to be worth €5 billion. Even more surprisingly, this fact doesn’t appear to be widely known, even in government.

I did confirm it with the Commission, and the UK (and indeed any non-EU country) can access up to 5% of the Scaleup Europe Fund. That’s a chonky potential €250,000 addition to the UK’s own planned £1bn scaleup fund, with the added advantage of the EU version already existing

Surprisingly, it turns out the UK already has access to the EU’s Scaleup Europe Fund, which is on track to be worth €5 billion. Even more surprisingly, this fact doesn’t appear to be widely known, even in government.

And the UK could soon have wider access to both the scaleup fund and the €4bn EIC fund, both of which are up for negotiation ahead of the EU-UK summit, which the Cabinet Office confirmed will happen before Christmas. Perhaps every university spinout is across this, but it was news to me. More here:

Surprisingly, it turns out the UK already has access to the EU’s Scaleup Europe Fund, which is on track to be worth €5 billion. Even more surprisingly, this fact doesn’t appear to be widely known, even in government.

When I contacted BIST after it was first reported by Sifted, they told me to confirm it with the European Commission, and said “no decisions have been taken while we explore options”

The Labour Party conference didn’t deliver any surprises on R&D, but it was possible to feel which way the wind is blowing I sat down with Emily Darlington MP to talk about it. As an adviser during the New Labour years, both on science and within the Treasury, she had some important insights

And she thinks universities need to change much more on commercialisation, because “we have not modernised in terms of what we allow our professors to do” Darlington said universities tend to look at how they can make money out of commercialisation rather than incentivising academics to do it

The Labour Party conference didn’t deliver any surprises on R&D, but it was possible to feel which way the wind is blowing I sat down with Emily Darlington MP to talk about it. As an adviser during the New Labour years, both on science and within the Treasury, she had some important insights

Indeed, the science minister Chris McDonald told me the UK is “choking at the moment on our lack of ability to commercialise the successful curiosity research” I had asked him whether he thought it was important to increase the budget for curiosity-driven research (which is flat cash until 2029-30)

The Labour Party conference didn’t deliver any surprises on R&D, but it was possible to feel which way the wind is blowing I sat down with Emily Darlington MP to talk about it. As an adviser during the New Labour years, both on science and within the Treasury, she had some important insights

Andy Burnham also seems to be taking his cue on research and innovation from Brown In his conference speech, Burnham said: “I see startups and scaleups pouring out of our world-class universities…As Gordon Brown has said, we can be the world’s innovation nation, and he’s right, we can”

The Labour Party conference didn’t deliver any surprises on R&D, but it was possible to feel which way the wind is blowing I sat down with Emily Darlington MP to talk about it. As an adviser during the New Labour years, both on science and within the Treasury, she had some important insights

When the STFC crisis hit, someone said on here it was time to "wheel out the Cox" Well he was fully on show to policy types at the Labour conference yesterday, as @johnmorgan3.bsky.social witnessed He also said he had the last STFC crisis to thank for his stardom (HT @mgmcquillan.bsky.social)