The Global Partner of Choice for R&D: Finding the UK’s place in a changing world
This report asks the UK Government to recognise the power that research and development (R&D) has to create economic growth in the UK, boost its soft power and make it healthier and safer.
To achieve these outcomes, the UK should recast itself as the global partner of choice for R&D through strategic partnerships, enhanced international collaboration and a focus on mutual benefits, while addressing health security as a critical component of national safety.
Report at a glance
This report was authored by Wellcome.
- Published:
- 10 July 2025
- Strategic programme:
- What's inside:
- A call for the Government to make the UK the global partner of choice for R&D and key recommendations for how it can achieve this.
- Who this is for:
- UK Government, diplomatic community and wider global health policy community.
- Creative commons:
Summary
In 2020, Wellcome published its report on the UK’s role in global research, setting out how the UK Government should use R&D to find its place in a changing world. The world of 2025 is different to the world of 2020, with new threats and new opportunities. Global collaboration has been strained by conflict, increased protectionism and reduced engagement by major powers in multilateral processes. Wellcome has therefore updated our assessment of the UK’s global role in research to align it with the changing world.
R&D is key to the UK Government’s growth mission, with the Government itself recently pointing to evidence showing that on average £1 invested in public R&D leverages double that in private investment and generates £7 in net benefits to the UK economy in the long run, but there is much more that investing in R&D can offer the UK.
As well as creating much needed economic growth, R&D can help the UK find its place in a changing world by boosting its soft power, moving it from a regulation adopter to a regulation innovator and improving its national security through health security.
For this potential to be realised, the Government must recast the UK as the global partner of choice for R&D. This means changing the way the UK presents itself to the world, building a new strategy for modern, international research partnerships and recognising the benefits of the global exchange of people and ideas.
Key findings
The UK’s strength in R&D is an asset that should be put to full use. Framed in the right way, it can even be a medium through which the UK finds its place in a changing world. Investing in R&D will:
Grow the economy
R&D is rightly recognised by the Government as a key vehicle for economic growth but more ambitious investment is needed to realise R&D’s potential.
To achieve its potential through R&D, Wellcome is proposing the Government position the UK as the global partner of choice for R&D by:
Changing the way the UK presents itself
Moving away from the language of being a science superpower or powerhouse, communicating the UK as the global partner of choice for R&D.
Conclusion
This Government has a choice. It can use the current situation to excuse itself from the global stage, reducing its spending abroad, continuing the slide towards isolationism, ceding its soft power, leaving malign actors to step up, and failing to solve shared global challenges. Or it can seize this opportunity, help to solve some of the world’s greatest shared problems, create economic prosperity, enhance national security and strengthen its soft power. As a global foundation, based in the UK, Wellcome will be ready to assist should it choose the latter.
Quotes
To govern is to choose. Research leadership, and crucially partnership, can help shape the UK’s role in the world. I hope the Government will choose to make good use of this opportunity in the challenging economic and geopolitical times ahead.
In a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, divided, and protectionist, the Government must resist the drift to isolationism and grasp the opportunity to present itself as the global partner of choice for R&D.
The UK must support a more central role for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in setting research agendas, with institutions in these countries leading the way.
The Government must find a way to embed the transfer of R&D talent between the UK and its partners. Many of these transfers will be temporary and the people who leave will extend UK influence to the countries in which they settle.
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