Response to the House of Lords financing and scaling call for evidence
BIA submitted our response to a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee call for evidence, looking at the financing and scaling of UK science and technology.
The inquiry seeks to understand why the UK can struggle to translate its R&D and innovation into economic growth, and companies that start, scale, and stay in the UK. BIA was happy to engage with the enquiry, as the difficult route to commercialisation and the lack of scale-up capital in the UK have long been focus areas for the BIA's policy work.
In our response, we:
- Reiterate that despite its world-leading life sciences and biotech sector, the UK underinvests in life science, with a distinct funding gap at scale-up.
- Highlight that this lack of investment is not due to the quality of UK companies or innovation, as international investors are overrepresented in UK financing deals, which leads to the offshoring of wealth creation.
- Explain that pension funds – both local government and defined contribution – are well placed to increase their exposure to late-stage VC funds and growth-stage public market deals, but they're not moving fast enough.
- Call for government to mandate pension funds to invest in innovative UK industries, and ensure that the UK pensions industry, which enjoys a dependable and growing income enabled by tax relief at great cost to the UK taxpayer, uses our nation’s wealth to build an economic future for UK citizens’ benefit.
