Ian Chapman

So I can sort of see why he might be frustrated seeing these very elaborate bureaucracies that are used to select research grants.

What he was saying was sort of building a bit on some of the things that has been mentioned by Ian Chapman, the chief executive of UK Research and Innovation.

And he was basically saying that he wants to see a more active demand management system at UKRI, so managers taking more decisions on what applications make it through to the final stages for peer review by expert panels.

He also wanted to see fewer longer awards, which would mean basically making it harder to apply for research grants, and then fewer grants going out.

You know, we often sort of say, you know, does who the minister is really matter? You know, to what extent is Jackie Smith driving HE reform, for example, in the FA? But, you know...

I think no one would deny that Patrick Vallance, the science minister, actually did sort of impose a lot of his own sort of personal beliefs and policy steers onto the system, you know, in particular in the direction he gave to UKRI, the appointments he made, especially Ian Chapman, a CEO, you know, so that may sort of fade away a little bit, you know, as we have sort of now have an MP and a politician as opposed to, Early indications, my sort of tip would be that one of the things that's going to take quite a lot of the sort of oxygen in that kind of innovation space is stuff around spin-outs, commercialization, and especially the question of sort of whether science and tech companies remain in the UK, which is to some extent is sort of one step removed from universities.

So it could be that there'll be sort of less government attention on things like, you know, on the sort of bucket one and the ref and things like that.

That may be left more to the sector to get on with.