By 4:48 am in the morning of Friday 5 July it was all over. Rishi Sunak, leader of the Conservative party, conceded defeat in the UK general election to the Labour party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, with the final seat count giving Labour 411 seats compared with the 121 of the Conservatives. Labour now have a historic landslide 174-seat majority. But with this changing of the guard, how does the UK research landscape look, and what does Prime Minister Starmer intend to do with it?

Credit: Alex Whitworth

Looking back at 14 years of Conservative government, several motifs stand out. These include Brexit, which has had a substantial impact not only on the free movement of European Union (EU)-based researchers into the UK, but also the funding of UK-based researchers through the temporary cessation of access to EU funding programmes such as Horizon Europe. As we previously noted1, this Brexit uncertainty was unsettling and led to delays in starting research, staff recruitment or equipment purchases and took a toll on the mental health of researchers.

The Brexit vote in part was driven by fears of immigration, and the former government has tried to act to reduce this. Government initiatives such as the imposing of a minimum salary threshold for immigrants outside the EU in 2012, followed by increases in the threshold for all foreign nationals up to £38,700, means that international postdoc recruitment was affected, as starting salaries can be below this threshold2. Furthermore, international students were controversially included in migration figures, and recent restrictions on student visas now exclude dependents. Given that international Master’s and PhD students tend to be older and with dependents, this exclusion has reduced their number. High-quality science requires high-quality recruitment, and it seems counterproductive to reduce the number of candidates who can be highly qualified and globally mobile. Moreover, given that university funding in the UK can rely substantially on foreign student fees, a reduction in student numbers can impact full-time staff, and several universities have had to implement job cuts or freeze recruitment to make the books balance, in turn potentially impacting scientific research. A second look at these policies could be beneficial.

Going into the election the two main parties had different visions of net zero, the legal requirement for there to be zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. The Conservatives had delayed implementation of several measures to meet this target, such as delaying the phase-out of petrol engines from 2030 to 2035. By contrast, the Labour manifesto takes the net-zero targets far more seriously, indeed it is one of the five missions that Labour are committed to implementing. To deliver this, they will execute a doubling of onshore wind, tripling of solar power and quadrupling of offshore wind by 2030. Although outside the lifetime of this parliament, with a general election that must be held by August 2029, it seems certain that the new government must rapidly make significant inroads on this. A promising start is the immediate lifting of the ban on onshore wind that was implemented by a previous Conservative government. The establishment of a publicly owned company to invest in energy production, Great British Energy, is welcome to enable a quicker green transition.

Included in Labour’s manifesto commitments are promises to invest in carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and marine energy, and energy storage. These are all active research areas in both fundamental and applied research. Sadly, there is not much detail on Labour’s vision for research, or as they term it innovation. In terms of funding, it is proposed that short funding cycles be scrapped, with ten-year budgets to allow the development of long-term partnerships. However, the devil is in the details, the ten-year budget cycle is proposed for key research and development institutions, but what are these institutions and how are they determined? Clarification here would be desirable, but an intent to reduce micromanagement is welcome. As is the appointment of Sir Patrick Vallance as the Minister for Science. As chief scientific advisor during the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped guide the governmental response, and it is expected that he is sympathetic to scientific concerns.

Another driving mission that Labour will seek to implement is that of increasing economic growth. Here a recent Royal Society policy briefing notes the role science plays in the economy3. As they state, new knowledge and ideas can enable economic benefits, increase productivity, develop skilled people and make wider impacts that enable other economic activity, for example improved public health. In order for the new Labour government to meet this mission of increasing growth, it would do well to consider the economic impact of science and how this can be applied.

The transition from a Conservative to a Labour government seems like the end of an era, but alternatively, given the rapid turnover of the last few prime ministers this also seems like business as usual. Given the size of the majority the new government has, we expect that the UK, and its scientific community, is in a position of stability. This is most welcome.