How can Britain become more prosperous?

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This is the third part of a series of primers about science, technology and prosperity. The first asked if Britain is losing its scientific edge, while the second explored the importance of technology to society. This primer draws these two themes together by investigating the link between science, technology, and prosperity – and asks whether a focus on innovation can help Britain prosper. These primers sit alongside the main report of Caudwell Strong Britain, British science and technology in 2024: Implications for ‘Net Zero’, which was published in June 2024.

Are you better off?

In the United States (US) presidential election of 1980, there was a debate between Jimmy Carter, the incumbent Democratic president, and Ronald Reagan, his Republican challenger. In that debate, Reagan posed the simple but powerful question to voters: ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’

This ‘better off’ framing has become a key way to think about elections ever since. When British voters went to the polls at the general election on 4th July 2024, they had in mind this same question: ‘has this government (or have successive recent administrations) left me better off?’ Across the United Kingdom (UK) there was a growing sense that the answer to that question was ‘no’, and a feeling that something is broken in Britain. According to a February 2024 survey, over two-thirds of people in the UK said the country was in decline,¹ and many people feel that the rules of the game are stacked against them: 70% of Britons believe the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.²

The thread connecting one generation to the next is weakening. The longstanding promise that each generation would be more prosperous and have more opportunities than its parents no longer holds true. The consequences are already apparent.

Markers of decline

To understand why people feel the UK is in decline, it is necessary to look at some markers which citizens experience in their day-to-day lives. In study after study, Britain is shown to perform poorly – perhaps surprisingly so – on a range of really important metrics, including areas such as the environment, housing, and infrastructure.

Environmental degradation and litter

England’s rivers, lakes and streams – according to a 2021 study – had some of the worst water quality in Europe, with every freshwater body in England failing chemical standards. In England, only 16% of freshwater bodies are classed as being ‘in good ecological health’, compared with an average of just over 50% across the European Union (EU).³

One major cause of this is the release of untreated sewage by water companies. In 2023, there were over 460,000 discharges – totalling more than 3.6 million hours of raw sewage being released into rivers and seas.⁴ Earlier this year, rowers in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race were told not to enter the River Thames due to high levels of the bacteria E. coli, which came from sewage directly discharged into the river.

Then there is the problem of litter and fly-tipping, which can make it hard for people to feel at home in, or proud of, their communities. In a 2015 report, the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee concluded: ‘England is a litter-ridden country compared to most of Europe, North America and Japan. Change is needed.’⁵ According to the environmental charity ‘Keep Britain Tidy’, more than two million pieces of litter are dropped in the UK every day – and this costs taxpayers around £1 billion a year for street cleaning.⁶

Housing

According to the Resolution Foundation, Britain’s ‘expensive, cramped and ageing housing stock offers the worst value for money of any advanced economy.’⁷ And British house prices relative to earnings have not been this bad since 1876.⁸ It is therefore unsurprising that, according to one report, England is the most difficult place to find a home in the developed world.⁹

The Centre for Cities claims that, compared to the average European country, the UK is missing some 4.3 million homes from the housing market as they were never built.¹⁰ These housing supply issues started in 1947, when the Town and Country Planning Act was enacted.

Infrastructure

On infrastructure, the UK faces a series of challenges. For instance, the country has not built a new potable reservoir since 1992 – and in that time the population of Britain has increased by around 10 million people.¹¹ Britain’s most recent nuclear power station, Sizewell-B, started construction in 1987 and became operational almost 30 years ago, in 1995.¹² Construction costs in London are the most expensive in the world, and UK cities make up a disproportionate number of the global top 20 – with seven cities including Bristol (10th), Manchester (12th), Birmingham (14th), Edinburgh (15th), Cardiff (16th), and Glasgow (18th).¹³

Short-term policymaking by successive governments and cuts to public services mean that Britain faces challenges in maintaining public facilities and national infrastructure. Over two-thirds of the UK’s manufacturers believe the country’s infrastructure has deteriorated over the past decade, affecting their capacity to do business, according to Make UK, which represents manufacturers in Britain.¹⁴

On transport, London has retained its unhappy title as the world’s most congested city.¹⁵ According to RAC Europe, 72% of British drivers with experience of driving abroad think that roads in Britain are worse than those in other European countries in terms of the number and severity of potholes.¹⁶ The UK also suffers from significantly higher road and rail infrastructure construction costs than European neighbours, such as Germany, France and Spain.¹⁷ This is a result of Britain’s excessively burdensome bureaucracy, such as Economic Impact Assessments which run to tens of thousands of pages. Britain’s inability to build HS2, despite strong commitment from successive governments, does not help investor confidence in the UK or for its reputation for following through on commitments.

Inadequate health and nutrition

Levels of child poverty in the UK are the worst among the world’s richest nations.¹⁸ Over 14 million people – more than 1 in 5 Britons – were in poverty in 2021-2022, including around eight million working-age adults, over four million children, and about two million pensioners.¹⁹ It is harder for people living in poverty to live healthy lives; nutritious food is over two and a half times more expensive than unhealthy foods.²⁰ Healthy foods cost around £8.50 for 1,000 calories compared to £3.25 for the same number of calories from less healthy foods.²¹

At the same time, Britain has one of the worst obesity rates in Europe.²² Rates of child obesity in the UK have been gradually increasing over the last decade, but there was a sharp increase during the pandemic,²³ with some 56,000 more children living with obesity as a result of the pandemic. Researchers estimate the cost to society may be £8.7 billion per year.²⁴

Recently, ‘Victorian era’ diseases, such as rickets and scurvy – proxies for malnutrition – have been on the rise in the UK, and some children are not growing properly because they are malnourished.²⁵ Hospital admissions in Britain for diseases such as scurvy and rickets is around 10,000 a year.²⁶

A stagnant economy

These examples collectively paint a compelling and distressing picture of a country which is far from flourishing. One way of understanding these trends on a national scale is that nominal UK gross domestic product (GDP) per capita today is almost the same today as it was in 2007, while the US has grown 40% in this time (see: Graph 1).²⁷

Graph 1: US and UK GDP per capita, 1980-2024

Prosperity through science and technology

It has become an article of faith that science and technology are the means to boost prosperity in the UK. In 1963, for example, Harold Wilson, then Prime Minister, pledged to harness the ‘white heat’ of a scientific revolution to forge a new Britain, and that this would lead to prosperity.²⁸ More recently, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak promised to harness British technological excellence to the national benefit.²⁹ No doubt, this draws off Britain’s illustrious history as the first industrial nation. Science and technology can help boost prosperity in many ways, including through tackling pollution and environmental degradation, and in improving healthcare.

Tackling pollution and environmental degradation

Scientific advancements can help the UK manage resources more efficiently, such as developing renewable energy sources or using precision agriculture to optimise crop yields. Renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro power also helps to reduce the amount of pollution generated by traditional power plants.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is critical to the UK’s Net Zero ambitions. CCS involves capturing carbon dioxide at emission sources, such as power stations, then transporting and storing it underground. Nuclear power holds great potential in a world confronting climate change as the only low-carbon generation technology which can provide a reliable, constant baseload of energy to balance the variability of other renewable energy sources.

As well as commissioning and building more nuclear power plants, advanced fusion and fission reactor designs promise to make nuclear power a cheaper and safer option.³⁰ Scientists in the UK have also shown that nuclear fusion can release record-breaking amounts of energy, providing a demonstration of its scientific and technological feasibility. In February 2024, Britain’s JET reactor set a world record for the energy output of a fusion reaction.³¹

Breakthroughs in healthcare

Innovation also brings forth better, more affordable products and services which improve people’s quality of life. Medical research and technological innovations lead to improved diagnostics, treatments, and preventative measures, leading to a healthier population. This includes wearable technology, which has enabled more convenient, less invasive and more personalised medical devices which enable real-time detection of health conditions. It also includes innovation such as implantable microchips to mitigate chronic pain.³²

The myth of the panacea of science and technology

But here’s the problem. Politicians like to present cutting-edge science and technology as a panacea to a range of hard problems. Of course, they will help enormously and benefit people’s lives in ways we often cannot begin to imagine.

But the focus on advanced technology seems to be at the expense of foundational, if less seductive, infrastructure – even though the two are not mutually exclusive. It is as if the UK is trying so hard to be a Silicon Valley that it is neglecting those things which make people’s lives comfortable and meaningful, such as clean and safe streets, functional transport infrastructure, and adequate housing. So maybe Britain should start by looking closer to home – and learning how and why our European neighbours seem to be so much better at building basic infrastructure.

We should also consider this: what does grandiose rhetoric around artificial intelligence (AI), quantum technology, and the Internet of Things (IoT) sound like to those who just want their basic needs met? The promises and possibilities offered by advanced technology, while very real, can sound utopian in a world where the country cannot get the basic things right.

Technological advancements will lead to job displacement in certain sectors, potentially exacerbating income inequality. PWC estimates that automation will impact 30% of UK jobs by the mid-2030s.³³ Those most affected by this include those working in financial services, transport, manufacturing, and retail.³⁴

Scientific and technological innovations raise ethical concerns which need to be addressed, such as those surrounding gene editing or AI. While innovation can help address environmental challenges, it is crucial to ensure new technologies are developed and used sustainably. AI currently uses as much energy as mid-sized countries, such as the Netherlands or Sweden.³⁵

So this is the central point of this primer: Britain appears to be progressing at great speed towards some unknown promised land based on science and technology, and yet the country seems to be regressing in terms of how prosperous it feels and looks.

How did we get here?

This begs the question: why is the UK’s apparent capacity in technology not filtering down to day-to-day life? And why does Britain seem to lack the agility to seize opportunities science and technology are supposed to offer?

Institutional inertia and impotence

Over the last few centuries, the UK’s political system and institutions have helped the country navigate big changes gradually, and have helped ensure stability in a way many European neighbours may be envious of. But this can also be a hindrance, with institutional inertia acting as a barrier to change, reducing Britain’s agility to take advantage of the opportunities offered by technology.

Political churn also does not help. In the time that the tennis player Rafael Nadal was consecutively ranked in the top 10 (April 2005–March 2023), the UK had twenty housing ministers, each wanting to leave their own mark on the department and each with their own vision and priorities. The same is true of churn in policy papers and strategies – making it difficult for the civil service to work effectively and make long-term decisions.

As Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, economists, have argued, the government has become infantilised through overreliance on the consulting industry.³⁶ This weakens the civil service in its capacity and capability to carry out work, as well as to own that work, be accountable for it, learn from past experience, and improve for the future. Related to this is the loss of institutional memory in the civil service with the move of key figures between departments and out of government, and low pay is a barrier to attracting talent and expertise from the private sector into government.

Politicians are now under a spotlight with social media, and are required to navigate very different roles – from being effectively social workers to lawmakers to policy experts. This means that a member of parliament can end up focused on problems of individual constituents and not have the time or space to think through the deep systemic problems facing the country.

Lack of long-term thinking and boldness

The UK’s incoherent and ad hoc approach to industrial policy and infrastructure is stifling innovation and hampering progress. While Britain has had many plans for growth, it lacks a long-term strategic vision. There has been significant policy churn in the UK’s industrial strategy and attempts to address regional inequalities from governments of all stripes. Constant policy rehashing has not been good for productivity. It is expensive, does not create an environment of stability conducive to investor confidence, and means that strategies are not given time to bear fruit. Labour’s announcement of an Industrial Strategy Council is a good start in tackling this, and is to be welcomed.³⁷

Who champions the mundane causes?

There is a gap in support for these mundane, if vital, domestic causes. Many citizens are passionately focused, rightly, on the existential threat of climate change, and on human rights violations around the world. Others are understandably more interested in the exciting promises held by advanced technologies. But there isn’t that same appetite for widespread engagement with – and advocacy for – local issues, such as for planning reform. Groups such as Britain Remade and Keep Britain Tidy are working to raise awareness and build support for such issues, but there is still work to ensure these issues receive due attention.

Bureaucracy preventing building

Many of Britain’s infrastructure challenges stem from the fact that the UK has been slow to build houses, transport links, and other forms of infrastructure. In the UK, Economic Impact Assessments are unnecessarily long. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ policy paper ‘Getting Great Britain Building Again’, for example, notes that the Economic Impact Assessment for Sizewell C nuclear power station is 44,260 pages – ‘more than 30 times longer than the complete works of Shakespeare.’³⁸ To address this bureaucracy, the UK needs to liberalise its planning laws, and Environmental Impact Assessments could be replaced with shorter Environmental Outcome Reports.³⁹ His Majesty’s (HM) Government has plans to free up grey belt land for building homes, and has pledged to build 1.5 million homes over this parliament – but this is still a moderate ambition in comparison to the scale of the challenge facing the UK

Lack of investment

In order to deal with the impact of climate change and the energy transition, Britain will need to build larger, and – in some cases – more complex infrastructure, but HM Government has under-invested in infrastructure for decades, even as the population has grown substantially.⁴⁰ Indeed, in the four decades up to 2019, UK average Gross Fixed Capital Formation was the lowest in the G7.⁴¹

Conclusion

Just as mastery over science and technology delivered industrialisation – and all the remarkable uplifts in standard of living for the British people – the UK can seize on its strengths in next-generation innovation to improve the prosperity of the nation in the 21st century. But this requires greater focus on the national powerbase of the country: the homes, roads, railways, electricity production and transmission systems, fibre optic connections, sewers, and so on, which make technological innovation possible. If Britain wants to make full use of science, technology and innovation to improve national prosperity, HM Government should:

Develop a coherent and comprehensive industrial policy and infrastructure plan which addresses the UK’s long-term needs, and encompasses foundational aspects – such as roads, the electricity grid, and housing – as well as advanced technology;
Invest, for the long-term, in public infrastructure and services, and leverage private sector investment to address Britain’s infrastructure deficit and support the energy transition;
Improve the UK’s ability to build infrastructure to budget and on time through liberalising planning laws and reducing bureaucracy;
Reduce the government’s overreliance on external consultants to empower the civil service and promote internal expertise and institutional memory;
Establish and increase coordination between infrastructure planning bodies, such as the National Infrastructure Commission and Infrastructure and Projects Authority, and the new government’s proposed Industrial Strategy Council.

This Primer is kindly sponsored by John Caudwell as part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Caudwell Strong Britain project.

About the author

Dr Mann Virdee is a Senior Research Fellow in Science, Technology, and Economics at the Council on Geostrategy. He leads Caudwell Strong Britain. Previously, he was a researcher at the RAND Corporation, where he managed and conducted research on areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, 5G, space science and governance, biotechnology and the life sciences, and research and innovation. Mann has also worked for the UK Parliament, and the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF on issues such as global development finance, poverty, healthcare, and education. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, an MSc from King’s College, London, and a BSc from Queen Mary University of London.

Disclaimer

This publication should not be considered in any way to constitute advice. It is for knowledge and educational purposes only. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Council on Geostrategy or the views of its Advisory Council.

Image credit: Mike Willshaw (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

No. 2024/24 | ISBN: 978-1-914441-77-6

1
Ipsos, ‘Most say Britain is in decline, against a backdrop of anti-system sentiment’, Ipsos, 15/02/2024, https://www.ipsos.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
2
Ibid.
3
Harry Cockburn, ‘England’s rivers, lakes and streams “among worst in Europe”’ amid concern over sewage and farm pollution’, The Independent, 15/09/2021, https://www.independent.co.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
4
Sandra Laville, Helena Horton and Alex Clark, ‘Water companies in England face outrage over record sewage discharges’, The Guardian, 27/03/2024, https://www.theguardian.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
5
‘Litter and fly-tipping in England’, House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee, 10/03/2015, https://parliament.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
6
‘Litter & the Law’, Keep Britain Tidy, no date, https://www.keepbritaintidy.org/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
7
Resolution Foundation [@resfoundation], The UK’s expensive, cramped and ageing housing stock offers the worst value for money of any advanced economy. This housing crisis is decades in the making, with successive governments failing to build enough new homes and modernise our existing stock. [Tweet]. X. https://twitter.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
8
John Burn-Murdoch, ‘The housing crisis is still being underplayed’, Financial Times, 13/01/2024, https://www.ft.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
9
Robert Booth, ‘England worst place in developed world to find housing, says report’, The Guardian, 05/10/2023, https://www.theguardian.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
10
Samuel Watling and Anthony Breach, ‘The housebuilding crisis: The UK’s 4 million missing homes’, Centre for Cities, 22/02/2023, https://www.centreforcities.org/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
11
Rob Hakimain, ‘The challenge of building more reservoirs to ensure UK’s water resilience’, New Civil Engineer, 01/09/2022, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
12
Institution of Mechanical Engineers, ‘When did Britain last build a nuclear power station?’, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, no date, https://www.imeche.org/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
13
Neil Gerrard, ‘What makes construction projects in the UK so unusually expensive?’, Construction Briefing, 14/04/2024, https://www.constructionbriefing.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
14
Gill Plimmer and Oliver Telling, ‘UK infrastructure has deteriorated in last 10 years, manufacturers warn’, Financial Times, 22/10/2023, https://www.ft.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
15
Bob Pishue, ‘2022 Global Traffic Scorecard: Congestion is Up Despite High Oil Prices’, INRIX, 09/01/2023, https://inrix.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
16
RAC, ‘Foreign roads put the UK’s to shame, say drivers’, RAC, 29/07/2023, https://www.rac.co.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
17
Sam Fleming, Jim Pickard and Gill Plimmer, ‘Can the UK afford to build better infrastructure?’, Financial Times, 30/01/2024, https://www.ft.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
18
Reuters, ‘Child poverty levels in the UK worst among world’s richest nations, UNICEF report finds’, Reuters, 07/12/2023, https://www.reuters.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
19
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘UK Poverty 2024’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 23/01/2024 https://www.jrf.org.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
20
The Food Foundation, ‘Major report highlights impact of Britain’s disastrous food policy’, The Food Foundation, 18/07/2022, https://foodfoundation.org.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
21
Ibid.
22
Eri Sugiura, ‘Britain has one of the worst obesity rates in Europe. Why?’, Financial Times, 13/10/2023, https://www.ft.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
23
Andrew Czyzewski, ‘Soaring childhood obesity from pandemic could cost UK billions’ Imperial College London, 24/01/2024, https://www.imperial.ac.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
24
Ibid.
25
Mark Honigsbaum, ‘“It is shameful”: why the return of Victorian-era diseases to the UK alarms health experts’, The Observer, 18/02/2024, https://www.theguardian.com/ (checked 23/08/2024).
26
Abigail O’Leary, ‘Urgent warning over surge in Victorian diseases across UK amid cost of living crisis’, The Mirror, 10/07/2024, https://www.mirror.co.uk/ (checked 23/08/2024).
27
International Monetary Fund, ‘GDP per capita, current prices’, International Monetary Fund, n.d., https://www.imf.org/ (checked 23/08/2024).
28
Matthew Francis, ‘Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” speech 50 years on’, The Guardian, 19/09/2013, https://www.theguardian.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024)
29
Boris Johnson, ‘We are injecting funds to restore Britain’s status as a scientific superpower’, The Telegraph, 20/06/2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024); Rishi Sunak, ‘I want to cement this country’s place as a scientific superpower’, The Times, 06/03/2024, https://www.thetimes.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
30
International Energy Forum, ‘Nuclear Energy is Becoming Safer and More Efficient. Here’s How’, International Energy Forum, 30/08/2022, https://www.ief.org/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
31
Matthew Sparkes, ‘UK nuclear fusion reactor sets new world record for energy output’, New Scientist, 08/02/2024, https://www.newscientist.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
32
NYU Langone Health, ‘Implantable Brain Device Relieves Pain in Early Study’, NYU Langone Health, 21/06/2021, https://nyulangone.org/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
33
PWC, ‘Will robots really steal our jobs?’, PWC, n.d., https://www.pwc.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
34
Ibid
35
Brian Calvert, ‘AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning.’, Vox, 28/03/2024, https://www.vox.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
36
Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, ‘Consultants and the Crisis of Capitalism’, Project Syndicate, 02/03/2023, https://www.project-syndicate.org/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
37
Labour Party, ‘Partnership Through Prosperity: Labour’s Industrial Strategy’, Labour Party, No date, https://labour.org.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
38
‘Getting Great Britain building again: Speeding up infrastructure delivery’, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, 22/11/2023, https://www.gov.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
39
Britain Remade, ‘Back to what we’re good at: A plan to get Britain building again’, Britain Remade, no date, https://www.britainremade.co.uk/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
40
Raoul Ruparel, Patrick Roche, Dale Williams, James Hollingsworth, Stuart Westgate, Tim Chapman, Edward Zaayman, Helena Fox, and Anja Johnson, ‘Reshaping British Infrastructure: Global Lessons to Improve Project Delivery’, BCG, 07/02/2024, https://www.bcg.com/ (checked: 23/08/2024).
41
Ibid.