The UK rejoins Horizon programme, and how we lost our tails

The UK severed ties with Europe’s £80 billion Horizon research and innovation project following its exit from the EU. The move provoked great consternation amongst large parts of the country’s scientific community at the time, and it has taken several years of painstaking negotiations for the UK to finally regain associate membership. But is the deal as good as the one that it had before Brexit? Michelle Donelan is the UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Michelle - Horizon isn't a EU exclusive scheme. What Horizon is, is it's the world's largest research collaboration program. So for the UK to reassociate is a big deal, not just for the scientific community and for businesses who can access it, but of course for the British public who ultimately will benefit from any developments in research. That could include drug discovery or medical advances or climate change. So this is really good news and what makes this different is the fact that this is a better deal than what we had on the table when we first left the European Union. We have the ability to be able to obtain more money than we're putting in by the nature of it. And we also have a safety mechanism. So if the reverse happens, we're protected and we can get some money back. So this is good news for the taxpayer as well. And on average, each business in the UK will benefit £450,000. So they bid in for a pot of money to help them in terms of a research and development project. And then they are accessing this research collaboration fund.

Chris - But how much is this costing us to be in the club in Europe? Because when we left the Horizon program, the UK government, because the UK is a big contributor to science anyway, said, 'well actually, we'll just step in and fill the void of what the grants coming back from the Horizon program would've been.' So it was sort of cost neutral at the time to UK science apparently. But what's it costing now and why are the EU even interested in signing up to this if we get more back than we were putting in before?

Michelle - So basically to bridge the gap, we did something called the Horizon guarantee. So we didn't leave scientists and innovators and businesses without any potential funding during that period of time, but this will be costing us roughly £2 billion a year. But it depends on how much we're actually getting back. And that's why we want to maximise this opportunity. So when I talked to scientists and businesses and innovators, and when I began in this role, their key message to me was, we have to associate with Horizon because of the value that that will add. When we were previously members, over half of the projects that we were involved with, we led on. So we've got a legacy of being very successful in this scheme. We want to maximise this opportunity to get the most value for money out of it for the taxpayer. So we've not just been hoping that businesses and scientists bid into it. We've actually been marketing our rear association, especially to those that are new to academia, younger scientists and researchers and to businesses that haven't participated before. We've also been giving funds to help with the process of bidding in. And in addition, we've got a road show that's already beginning. First one is partnering with the University of Birmingham to raise real awareness about our association and to provide some of the answers to how does this actually work? How do I access this fund if I want to participate? And we've also worked with Innovate UK, which is an arm of UKRI, which is basically the big body that gives out research funding in the UK. And they have redesigned the website and the processes to make this as simple as quick and as easy as possible for those who want to participate in the scheme.

Chris - Allied to that is something which is really important at the moment worldwide, which is this pursuit of net zero and better ways of generating the energy we need in future. Correct me if I'm wrong though, we're out of the European fusion endeavours though, aren't we? We've been a big contributor to ITER, which is the experimental nuclear reactor at Cadarache in France, a big fusion project. We're not part of that now through this deal.

Michelle - So there were three schemes under basically one umbrella often in terms of how they were referred to. And they are Horizon, which we've been talking about here today, Copernicus, which we've also reassociated with, and Euratom. Now, we didn't decide to reassociate with Euratom because we've been listening to the experts, those on the ground that actually benefit from these schemes, who spent a great deal of time talking to that sector who made it very, very clear that given the gap in time of association, that it would be far better for the British fusion sector to get that same quantum in money, but get it directly to them rather than go round the scheme.

Chris - So you are going to do that. You're actually pursuing a UK fusion sector?

Michelle - We are giving the same quantum of money, but directly to the UK sector. And that was the direct ask of the fusion sector in this country.

Chris - Got to be careful with the word quantum though, because it means something very, very small

Michelle - But it's the same volume of money that we had <laugh> or even giving. I think we, we can play around with different words, but I can assure you they all mean the same thing when they're coming out of my mouth, which is that we have been very clear that the money that we would've put in to Euratom is the same money that the sector will be getting, but rather than going via a middleman if you like. They're getting it directly, which was their ask and it was the ask of their association body. And we listen to that.

Chris - Where does the government stand on net zero climate change now?

Michelle - Well, we haven't deviated in our position of saying how important it is that we tackle climate change and that we stick to our 2050 target. We were the first country in the world to legislate, to put that on the statute books. What we did change last year was some of the ways in which we get there by delaying some of the targets and making them more doable. There's no point setting targets for target's sake if we all know that they're not achievable or that they'll bankrupt the nation or that they're impossible for normal families, including families in my constituency. We have to be realistic about these things. And I think that the thing that the Prime Minister said that really resonated with me was that what we were in danger of doing if we stood blindly to those targets, was alienating people away from something that is incredibly important. And I believe passionately that we all have a role in tackling climate change, not just governments, not just local councils, not just local communities, but on an individual basis. And to be able to achieve that, everybody's got to buy into that mission. And we actively need to be turning people towards that, not against it. And therefore it has to be realistic. It has to be affordable. But we certainly haven't deviated in any way from the end goal. Not at all.

Chris - Are you planning, though, to try and tighten up and close the gap on how we actually account for emissions? Because for instance, if we shut down an industry in this country and buy what we would've made here from overseas, we've basically exported the carbon emissions to someone else's country and someone else's problem. It's a global problem ultimately, but we've made it appear on their books as a carbon output. Are we actually properly accounting for these sorts of things? Another example, people are saying, let's build a solar farm, for example. But when you look at the calculations for all the farmland being replaced by solar panels, they're not taking into account the fact that the food that would've been grown there is now accruing a big carbon footprint coming from grain producing nations overseas.

Michelle - But that's not strictly true because solar is predominantly placed on low agricultural grade land that wouldn't therefore have the same propensity to go through. But the broader point is that there is merit to your, the sentiment of your argument when the fact that we are responsible for a tiny, tiny proportion of the world's carbon emissions. Therefore it is a global challenge. And that is very much why we have been trying to encourage, enable, and support the rest of the world in this mission to be able to tackle climate change. That's why we have been so forthright in our work and support of the COP process as well.

Chris - I wanted to ask you about artificial intelligence as well, because that's an area where the UK traditionally can make a big difference. And I know that the Prime Minister made some quite enthusiastic points about that. What can you tell us about what scientifically you have in mind in that direction?

Michelle - Yeah, absolutely. So artificial intelligence is the fastest moving emerging technology that I believe we've ever seen. And with that comes humongous opportunities. Some of those opportunities we are already seeing in the likes of our NHS with the detection of breast cancer quicker, with the use in nearly 90% of all stroke units, for example. It is assisting many professions and the future is really limitless in relation to artificial intelligence. But with that, the other side of the coin has very real and potential risks.They are basically two sides of the same coin. And that is very much why we have tried to address and grip those risks so that we can seize those huge opportunities in our public services and our businesses, and we can make sure that the British public draw down on the benefits of artificial intelligence. And it was this government and my department, which led the way with the first ever AI safety summit back in November in Bletchley Park where we convened the world, not just governments, but also the companies producing artificial intelligence. Those at the cutting edge of what we call the frontier of artificial intelligence and also members of civil society, academics and experts who have studied this field for a great deal of time. We produced a landmark declaration agreement, the Bletchley declaration. We also got a landmark agreement to ensure that we can test the models pre-deployment, which is vitally important because the next set of models are about to come out. And with every generation of new models, the capability increases. And we have set up the world's first ever institute to do just that, to test these models, both pre and post-deployment. A number of countries around the world have talked about this and are in the process of doing this, like America, Japan, Singapore, and France, who I have been meeting with today. But the stage that they're at with their institute is earlier than ours. We have our institute fully set up and already testing these models that is enabling us to really prioritise the safety of the British public. It's looking at things like societal harms, looking at things like loss of control and also misuse. But the only reason we're doing all of that is so that we can seize these opportunities in the likes of our NHS in our transport networks, our businesses can deploy AI and be more efficient and effective so we can add to our economic growth. So we can grow our jobs. And the other thing that we're trying to do is really foster an innovative environment so that AI companies want to locate here, they want to grow here, they want to create more jobs on British soil. And that's been working. We have already Google DeepMind as a homegrown success story in the UK, but OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the biggest AI companies have chosen the UK to locate their international headquarters. And we have a full spectrum of AI corporations right through the ecosystem at all stages with the AI industry.