Early years of Government support
13. The history of UK Government support for nanotechnology
is perhaps surprisingly long. It began in 1986 when the National
Physical Laboratory, in conjunction with DTI, launched the National
Initiative on Nanotechnology to promote awareness. This was built
upon two years later when the DTI launched the LINK Nanotechnology
Programme (LNP). Over the ten years of its life, the LNP provided
£23.6m in support of 28 projects involving 15 universities,
19 SMEs and 25 large companies. An evaluation of this programme
concluded that its impact had been high, increasing sales for
participants by £8-12m, and providing, for the majority of
them, technical progress, increased R&D activity and spin-off
benefits.[15] Three of
the companies involved went on to become market leaders in their
respective microsystems sectors: anti-judder automotive braking
systems, fibre optics and semiconductor fabrication systems.[16]
14. The LNP came to an end in 1998, but there was
no immediate attempt to build upon its apparent success. We sought
to discover why. Patrick McDonald explained that, in spite of
the large number of benefits produced "we did not find a
particular large industrial engagement".[17]
He told us that only two companies—Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline—had
shown to the DTI any active interest in nanotechnology in the
early schemes.[18] The
DGRC told us that in the early days much of the UK funding came
from the US defence laboratories and that "we were perhaps
a wee bit late coming on-stream".[19]
Patrick McDonald guessed that the main reason was simply money—the
DTI's funding for technological support had been declining up
until 2002 and there was "very little money to spend in this
technology area".[20]
We have not been given a satisfactory explanation for the absence
of a successor programme to the LINK Nanotechnology Programme.
15. Since the end of the LNP the DTI's non-Research
Council support for nanotechnology consisted of an assortment
of small scale projects that included an element of nanotechnology
rather than being explicitly focussed on developing the technology
itself. These included LINK programmes in applied genomics, optics
and biotechnology. It was only in 2000-01 that the DTI appeared
to begin thinking seriously about providing significant levels
of support for nanotechnology. The Foresight materials panel produced
a report on nanotechnology in 2000 which led to three nanotechnology
research projects costing around £5m. Then the Research Councils
established two Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations in nanotechnology
and announced a basic technologies programme including support
for nanotechnology based projects worth £12m.[21]
The department sought to
learn lessons from the progress made in other countries by sending
multidisciplinary missions to the US and Germany in 2001-02.[22]
16. The failure to capitalise on this early work
has proved costly. By 2001, the UK had fallen from a position
generally regarded to be one of relative strength in nanotechnology
research to one of relative weakness. The DTI sponsored mission
to Germany and the USA concluded that "In 1986, the UK was
on the threshold of opportunity; in 2001 we are on the threshold
of a major challenge".[23]
The independent review of the LNP reported that
"There was a general feeling that the UK had fallen behind
those countries that had continued to underpin the development
of nanotechnology (US, Germany, Switzerland). It was also felt
that the focus on nanotechnology in the UK had diminished after
the support for infrastructure under the LNP was not continued".[24]
The extent to which
the UK has fallen behind in international terms is illustrated
in Table 2. Although reliable comparable figures are not always
available it is clear that the US and Japan have taken a very
significant lead in investing in nanotechnology. We were interested
that no-one we met on our visit to Germany
complained about a lack of funding for nanotechnology. Far Eastern
economies such as South
Korea and Taiwan are also investing
huge amounts in
nanotechnology research.
17. Even with
the money announced under the MNT Initiative, the UK is not competing
in the same league as major international competitors and is significantly
behind both France and Germany. This assessment
was confirmed by the Taylor Report, which concluded that "the
UK is indeed behind its major international competitors in the
industrial exploitation of nanotechnology, and in the level of
UK industrial support for R&D on nanotechnology applications".[25]
The DTI acted with commendable foresight in engaging industry
and universities in a nanotechnology programme in the 1980s when
few other countries had taken such steps. But the department's
failure to build upon the LNP programme with something similar
represents a very damaging failure, which has contributed significantly
to the UK falling from a position of international strength in
nanotechnology. This lack of foresight and ambition has left the
UK in the position of having to catch up.
Table 2: Government
support for nanotechnology (£millions)
