UK earmarks £14.5bn to be invested into Britain instead of EU

Michelle Donelan details UK discussions around joining EU Horizon programme

The UK has signalled that it won’t be bullied by the European Union, despite its latest deal with the bloc, as the Government gears up to pour nearly £15billion into Britain rather than Brussels. The Government has released plans for an alternative to the Horizon Europe scheme, which would help the UK fund science investment.

The programme would see the UK invest the same amount of funding as it would have paid to associate to Horizon – amounting to £14.6billion by the end of 2027/8.

The UK is currently talks with the EU in an attempt to gain association membership of the bloc’s multi-billion pound research and innovation scheme.

But Pioneer would stand as a “Plan B” option, should those talks fall through.

Pioneer has been dubbed a “bold alternative”, crafted to act as a safety net in the event “the terms of association with Horizon Europe are not in the UK’s interest”.

The Government described the plans as a “long-term, bold prospectus programme to support research and innovation in the UK should association to the Horizon Europe scheme not prove possible”.

While it said Horizon is the UK’s “preference”, the Government said association would need to be on the basis of a “good deal”, suggesting that the UK will not be coerced into a poor deal with its European counterparts.

Secretary of State for Science and Technology Michelle Donelan met with her counterpart from the EU Commission, Mariya Gabriel in Brussels earlier this week.

In a statement, Ms Donelan said: “We are engaging with the EU over Horizon Europe and I got the ball rolling this week with a meeting with Commissioner Gabriel in Brussels.

“We hope our negotiations will be successful, and that is our preference, but it must be on the right terms.

“We must ensure we have an ambitious alternative ready to go should we need it and that our businesses and researchers have fed into it.

“Our top priority is supporting them to ensure their ground-breaking work can continue no matter what.

“That is why I am starting this conversation today about how we will keep backing them, in any scenario so our sector has certainty as well as say.”

Science Minister George Freeman said: “Pioneer offers the opportunity to refresh our R&D ecosystem with more agile SRTI funding models that would benefit from substantially less bureaucratic application processes and ease private sector co-investment.”

He added: “By better harnessing our deep science, engineering, creative industries and technology expertise to tackle the urgent global grand challenges we all face, we can simultaneously attract billions of pounds of inward investment to the UK R&D ecosystem, deepen our global talent and tech transfer collaborations and unlock a sustainable cycle of long term growth, economic resilience and productivity, creating new opportunities in the UK Innovation Economy all around the UK.”

The UK was supposed to join the Horizon programme as an associate member two years ago, though the plans were paused because of the disagreements over Northern Ireland.

But talks have restarted since the UK signed a new deal on Northern Ireland with the EU, the Windsor Framework.

The agreement – signed last month – is aimed at easing trade difficulties in Northern Ireland.

It passed through the House of Commons by 515 votes to 29 earlier this month.

But he still faced a significant rebellion from his own MPs, as 70 MPs did not vote for the deal. 22 Conservative MPs voted down the statutory instrument, while 48 abstained. This amounts to 15 percent of Tory MPs. 6 DUP MPs and one independent MP – Andrew Bridgen – also voted against the legislation.

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