Getting a handle on innovation support is hard with many schemes, funding etc. Just looking at R&D, here is some data from Cambridge UK Innovation Report, 2025, using the latest 2022 data.
1. Spending on R&D, excluding tax credits looks like this: where the Sankey diagram nicely shows the potential difference between an intangible asset that can be financed in one area and have the performed investment be in another place:
(btw, within UKRI are a number of other institutions; research councils (competitive grants allocation, about 50% of the money: innovateUK(working with companies to derisk innovation, catapult centres etc. about 20% of the money). HEFCE/Research England give out REF-based money to universities. See here,).
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2. What does business spend the R&D money on (notice these are products and not industries)? Notice the massive figure on software development; and notice too the seperate line for computer programming and info services. The days of R&D being mostly pharma and transport are over.
3. Finally, notice too that government support for R&D can also be tax credits. They are much more than direct funding as the below shows:
4. and the figures for tax credits are very large; £7.5bn in 2022-3 "For the 2022–23 tax year, UK businesses claimed a total of £7.5 billion in R&D tax relief support. This figure is more than twice the £2.6 billion of direct support to business R&D provided by the government and UKRI in 2022"
By size "In terms of R&D tax credit claims by firm size in the UK, in the 2022–23 tax year:[2] • 67% (US$5 billion) were claimed by small and medium enterprises • 33% (£2.5 billion) were claimed by large firms."
