Thank you, Darling – UK spends on tech

The UK will invest £750 million ($A1.5 billion) in high potential technology enterprises in a new Strategic Investment Fund, announced in its budget today.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, said the new fund will be aimed at low-carbon technologies, advanced manufacturing and the life sciences.

While the rest of the country digests the news that the top income tax rate will rise to 50 per cent, and public borrowing will hit £175 billion ($360 billion) this year – and that the price of a pint of beer would rise by 1p – the Government is aiming to assist business and bring forward investment by extending a scheme to allow businesses to reclaim taxes made on profits and increasing the business capital allowance rate to 40 per cent.

The Government has also committed to cutting carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 and pledged billions to climate change research and clean technology projects. It will also invest in employment and training projects, although there is concern that there is no extra funding for university-based research.

While the opposition Conservative Party has gone feral, its leader David Cameron calling the governing Labour Party “the government of the living dead”, science and biotech industry associations welcomed the new funds.

The CEO of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), Jonathan Kestenbaum, said the Government had taken a vital step on the road to recovery from its current recession “and the future looks a lot brighter for the UK’s entrepreneurs”.

In a statement, NESTA said it had the largest portfolio of pre-revenue high tech businesses in the UK and had worked with the Government to design such a fund. The organisation had asked for £1 billion ($2 billion) but was happy to settle for the lesser amount.

“The fund will give a new vibrancy to the UK’s technology market and will bring about deep and lasting change for our economy,” Kesterbaum said in a statement.

Part of the fund will go towards digital technologies and broadband, and £250 million ($500 million) will go towards low-carbon investments. £50 million ($100 million) will go to the Technology Strategy Board agency for investments in high potential companies.