The long awaiting London Tech Week Kicks off today. The Chancello, Rishi Sunak addresses the audience in preparation for the amazing order of events for the program. Below is a summary of his address:
I grew up in California, where innovation was alive and thriving, and I see that culture here at home, too.
The UK has some of the best educated people, but we don’t have a monopoly on talent – nearly half of our STEM researchers are immigrants.
Half of our most innovative fastest companies have an immigrant founder. We’re making our visa system for international talent the most competitive in the World.
The UK has created more tech unicorns than any other country, bar the US and China, and we’re known for our agile approach to regulation.
With the rise of general-purpose technologies like AI, it is plausible to believe we are on the cusp of a new wave of innovation – but we need to be ready to capitalise.
In 2021, over 120 companies chose to list in London; confirming that London is the dominant European IPO market. We’re reforming our Listing Rules to make it even easier for companies to raise public funding.
And through the Future Funds and British Business Bank, we’re providing direct government backing to some of the most exciting, fastest-growing scale-up businesses.
Now our second priority is to equip our people with the skills they need to thrive. But it amounts to just three times the value of R&D tax relief enjoyed by many other countries.
I will make sure that our tax regime for innovation is globally competitive and creates proper incentives for all of you to invest and invent. Over the next few years, we’re increasing government investment in R&D by almost 50%.
As a% of GDP, that will put us above Germany, France, Israel, Canada, Japan, and the US.