**Government must “embrace the unpredictable nature of research”, says science secretary**
R&D “will be the anchor” for the government’s plans for the UK’s technology sector under wider ambitions to grow the economy, the science secretary has said.
Speaking at a conference held by the techUK trade body yesterday, Peter Kyle said government should be “a stable partner that our researchers can rely on—working with them to tackle the challenges that will define the decade to come”.
His comments came as the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology announced that former Conservative science minister David Willetts (pictured right, alongside science minister Patrick Vallance) had been [appointed as the first chair of the government’s Regulatory Innovation Office](https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-innovation-2025-3-david-willetts-picked-as-first-chair-of-regulatory-innovation-office/).
**Unpredictable research**
“Government must not be afraid to reform the way we regulate to favour innovation. Nor must we hesitate to embrace the unpredictable nature of research,” Kyle said.
Ahead of the unveiling of the government’s 10-year industrial strategy—a core part of plans to grow the economy expected in summer—Kyle said he would be bringing forward “a dedicated plan for our digital and technologies sector”.
“One of the challenges of designing a plan for this sector is just how rapidly technology is changing. Imagine if you’d published a 10-year plan for AI the day before ChatGPT was released,” he said.
“We can be certain, though, that British science will have a pivotal role to play. To future-proof our industrial strategy, we shouldn’t try and guess where research might end up before scientists have even started,” he added.
**Planning reforms**
The science secretary pointed out there was “no possible version of that future which does not have technology at its heart”. He added: “There is no route to long-term growth, no solution to our productivity problem, without innovation.”
But Kyle also noted a recent EU report from Mario Draghi which highlighted that Europe and Britain were behind the US in terms of competitiveness, mainly due to the growth of the tech sector.
UK life sciences firms were “demanding millions of square feet in new lab space”, but applications for that space were often “snarled up in our archaic planning process”, Kyle said.
“There is 10 times as much lab space in Boston as there is in Oxford, Cambridge and London combined,” he added.
The government [introduced a Planning and Infrastructure Bill to Parliament today](https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3946), which is expected to speed up planning decisions and give greater support to the development of labs and data centres.