Prime Minister sets national goal for UK to be world's leading innovation nation

The Prime Minister used a speech in Manchester to set a national goal for the UK to become the world's leading innovation nation. He told the summit that Britain is already an innovation nation and is close to that position, but must challenge itself to go further. He said the country needed to draw a line on a decade of too much drift and face forward with a sense of direction and purpose. The Business Secretary and AI Minister Kanishka Narayan were in attendance.

He said the goal would mean a globally significant cluster in every region and nation, and within those clusters a globally significant company in every region and nation. That would spread opportunity, investment, growth and good jobs fairly across the UK. He described this as a new intentional national drive to re-industrialise the UK in the 21st century as an innovation-led, research-driven economy. He said re-industrialisation was a serious part of the mission and should be felt by all people in all places.

He argued the UK could be the nation that finds a cure for cancer, makes a breakthrough on dementia or makes nuclear fusion a commercial possibility. He noted that Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in Manchester in 1919 and pointed to the Dalton Nuclear Institute as a world-leading asset nearby. He said that if anyone claimed the UK could not achieve such things, the answer was that it had done so before.

The Prime Minister placed the goal in a long history of British invention. He cited Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Tim Berners-Lee, as well as Alexander Fleming and Edward Jenner, and inventions including the electric motor, jet engine and telephone. He said innovation was part of Britain's tradition.

He then listed what he called current assets in every region and nation: - An expanding creative sector in the Liverpool City region, including Netflix productions filmed in Liverpool. - An outstanding advanced manufacturing research centre in South Yorkshire. - One of the continent's largest fintech sectors in Edinburgh. - Europe's gaming capital in Dundee. - A global hub for photonics in Glasgow. - Clean energy in Newcastle. - Space research in Leicester. - The future home of the UK's biggest electric vehicle battery plant in Somerset. - A global automotive engineering research and testing centre in Warwickshire. - The frontier of quantum research in Oxford. - A 100 billion chip design company headquartered in Cambridge. - A leading cyber cluster in Belfast. - Thousands of jobs in compound semiconductors in South Wales. - Greater Manchester as the biggest UK AI cluster by headcount outside London and the south east.

He also pointed to London's strengths in creative industries, research, fintech and AI, saying the capital was at the top of its game and could go further. He said every region needed to punch its full weight and make its presence felt on the world stage as a home of innovation.

Universities were central to his message. He said the UK's university assets are perhaps its strongest base for innovation leadership. He noted that 16 UK universities are in the top 100, all conducting world-leading research and spinning out start-ups. He said the UK Biobank would soon complete its move to Manchester Science Park, bringing cutting-edge robotics and leading research into cancer, dementia and heart disease. He added that the government is investing over 80 billion in research and innovation in the spending review.

But he said the UK is not making the most of its assets, talent, ideas and ambition. He called this the collective challenge and said the next decade had to be about combining work across different places so the country becomes more than the sum of its parts. He said the world is changing and presents huge challenges. He said he had felt that in his first two months as Prime Minister. He also said he had spoken to German Chancellor Merz in Germany the previous day, and that the UK must face these challenges with partners in Europe and beyond, networking with people everywhere to make Britain safer and healthier. The transcript ended before the speech concluded.