Industrial Strategy, Digital and Technologies Sector Plan  

In the third instalment of our updates on new Government policy, Lewis Miles and Maddie Cass from BIA’s Policy and Public Affairs team take a deep dive into the Industrial Strategy and the Digital and Technologies Sector Plan, breaking down the implications for engineering biology and the wider life sciences sector.  

The Industrial Strategy has been one of the most anticipated documents of 2025 from a policy standpoint. Aimed at creating a new relationship between Government and industry, the strategy was a keystone manifesto pledge of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. It also underpins a significant amount of current policy, designating eight priority sectors for growth, and subsequently releasing eight individual sector plans.  

Here we give you a deep dive into the Industrial Strategy itself, and a look at the Digital Technologies Sector Plan – one of the eight the sector plans that heavily features engineering biology as a frontier technology. 

Government launches the Industrial Strategy 

The Industrial Strategy, published on 23 June, is a ten-year plan that charts a strategic course for Government to work in partnership with industry in order to deliver growth. The aim is to create a sense of stability and purpose to give business the confidence to make long-term decisions and focus on creating wealth and prosperity. 

In a welcome – but not unexpected – development, given BIA’s strong pre-election engagement, the life sciences sector was recognised as one of the UK’s eight high-growth sectors, which in turn led to the publication of the Life Sciences Sector Plan. Government aims to support the growth of each of the eight sectors, and envisions that the economic benefits will spill out across the rest of the economy. For a more in depth look at the Life Sciences Sector Plan, take a look at our previous blog. Beyond the specific sectors, the strategy covers the breadth of the business environment, and is thus of great interest to the full spectrum of BIA members. From the encouragement of investment and adoption of innovation, to regulation, infrastructure, and skills, the strategy underpins every aspect of how businesses operate, and as such, it is essential that it works for the life sciences, irrespective of the specific sector plans.  

Some of the most impactful announcements from the strategy relate to the increased capacity and mandate of key funding platforms. This included the expansion of the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to allow it’s £27.8 billion to be deployed more strategically across subsectors – including life sciences and engineering biology – in order to drive growth. British Business Bank (BBB) was also expanded, with an extra £4 billion in funding to invest across the eight priority sectors, and the capability to directly invest up to £60 million in direct equity investments. A lack of investment is a key barrier currently facing the life sciences, and so these developments should have a significant impact. BIA has held roundtables with both the NWF and BBB to inform how they should deploy this capital and we continue to work closely with them.  

Beyond this, the strategy outlined a number of other commitments that are highly relevant to our sector:  

• Provide a first-class concierge service, via the Office for Investment, to make the experience of investing in the UK smooth, quick and attractive. 

• The establishment of a £54 million Global Talent Fund to attract around 10 world-class researchers and their teams to the UK, covering relocation and research costs over five years. 

• Increased support from UKRI via the pivoting of its programmes and budgets to focus on the eight priority sectors.  

• Increased certainty for gigafactories, laboratories, and data centres by allowing them to ‘opt in’ to be designated as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.  

• Targeted regulatory changes to streamline the route to market for medical products which have already been approved internationally.  

Prior to the publication of the strategy, the BIA advocated heavily on behalf of the life sciences sector. Many recommendations from our Industrial Strategy submission were reflected in the final document, with much of our focus aimed at increasing domestic investment for UK biotech. We also called for a ‘single front door’ approach to attracting international investment, a recommendation that is directly reflected in the government’s commitment to the provision of the concierge service in collaboration with the Office for Investment.  

As we move forward, the BIA will keep a close eye on the implementation of this strategy and work directly with ministers and officials to ensure that it is delivering what is promised, and needed. Of course, we will also turn our attention to the specific sector plans that are relevant to UK innovative life sciences and biotech, but effective delivery of the overarching strategy will be an essential anchor point and will underpin the success of the government’s plan for industry as a whole.   

Digital and Technologies Plan: what it means for engineering biology 

The Government’s new Digital Technologies Sector Plan sets out a vision to serve as an active partner to industry, aiming to support rather than obstruct innovation in six frontier technologies. Instead of focusing on a single sector, this plan aims to support technologies which are seen as key to the UK’s economic growth, national security and technological sovereignty. Engineering biology was rightfully recognised as one of the frontier technologies, and received £380 million of direct public investment. Of this pot, £196 million will fund the National Engineering Biology Programme, which aims to fund researcher-led and targeted R&D projects, focused on transformative applications of the technology. 

Funding to tackle the scale-up infrastructure gap 

From our perspective, the key announcement was the £184 million committed to the new Engineering Biology Scale-up Infrastructure Programme. Infrastructure was one of the first policy challenges we identified when beginning our work on deep biotech policy and we fed this into government as they wrote this sector plan. The fund is aimed at developing pilot and scale-up facilities aligned with innovators’ needs. Importantly, UKRI will support the programme by introducing new funding rules allowing R&D grants and loans to cover specialist equipment. The BIA is actively engaging with DSIT to ensure that insights from our members shape the design and delivery of these new facilities. 

Regulation as enabler of innovation 

The plan placed emphasis on regulation as a key enabler of engineering biology adoption. It aims to smooth the path for responsible adoption of engineering biology products and services by: 

• Deploying the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) to build on the success of the engineering biology regulatory sandbox.  

• Tasking the Regulatory Horizons Council with developing a framework to help regulators take more proportionate risks when regulating new technologies 

 Interestingly, the plan reinforces the Government's commitment to the Precision Breeding Act (2023), setting out the timeline for the Precision Bred Organisms (PBO) regulatory framework to be operational. However, as the UK and the EU negotiate a renewed trading relationship, BIA and others have warned that the UK may have to pause progress on PBOs in order to comply with EU import and export rules, BIA is actively responding to a call for evidence on the matter, pushing for gene editing to be protected from any dynamic regulatory alignment as part of a new pro-innovation relationship with the EU. 

Ecosystem building and international leadership 

Elsewhere, the plan outlines a set of measures to strengthen both the domestic and international ecosystem, including: 

• Utilising the new UKRI Engineering Biology Innovation Network to strengthen collaboration between researchers, innovators, and companies. 

•  A focus on international leadership through bilateral and multilateral partnerships to shape global research, innovation, and business environments. 

Cross-cutting interventions for all frontier technologies 

The plan also set out a range of cross cutting interventions aimed at supporting the gamut of frontier technologies. There was a big emphasis on technology adoption, recognising the findings of the recent Technology Adoption Review. Public procurement, a policy lever we have called for, is explored as an option to drive adoption, which will be expediated via the Commercial Innovation Hub which has an explicit aim of helping innovative firms to grow.  

BIA has an  active programme of work based on the needs of our members who we engage with via our Engineering Biology Advisory Committee and our Deep Biotech Community. We have a longstanding relationship with the Department of Science Innovation and Technology, and engaged with them throughout the development of the sector plan, sharing our policy recommendations for deep biotech. We will continue to bridge the gap between Government and industry as the plan is implemented over the coming years.