Sovereignty, scale and spinouts: Ben Spencer MP on why Britain can be more than a nation of R&D

For years, Britain has been known as a nation of inventors that produces Nobel prizes and patents, but it also has a reputation of struggling to scale those inventions into global industries. It is a charge the current government has been keen to address. Ministers talk of turning “world-leading science into sovereign industries,” of helping firms not just set up but “scale up” in Britain, and of ensuring more of the value created by innovation stays onshore.

Ben Spencer MP, the Conservative shadow minister for science, innovation and technology, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, singing from the same hymn sheet. In conversation with BI Foresight at the Civo Navigate conference in London last week, he rejected the idea that the UK is destined to invent but never scale. For him, sovereignty is not just about data residency or national security, but about whether Britain can commercialise its IP, mobilise domestic capital, and make itself indispensable in areas such as quantum, AI, and materials.

Spencer would not be drawn on detailed prescriptions, but he did nod to past government efforts, from the Patient Capital Review to the British Business Bank and the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, as examples of what he called the right direction. He is however sceptical when it comes to crowning national tech champions, but stresses this should not be confused with a hands-off approach. For him, the state’s role is to create the operating conditions – fairer procurement, access to long-term growth capital, and the right infrastructure – that allow British firms to scale on their own terms.

“The underlying prerequisite is choice,” he said. “Procurement decisions need to be fair, robust, objective but it still feels that they’re not.” He added that too many growth companies were still held back by lack of capital. “There’s a lot of cash in the pension sector which could be put to better use investing in British companies.”

What Britain still struggles with, Spencer suggested, is turning discovery into durable business. It’s a recurring theme.

“Something we don’t do well is commercialising IP once we’ve got it. That’s been our history. We gave the jet engine away.” He argued that too many spinouts and scale-ups remain constrained not by talent or ambition but by finance. “A lot of companies say to me it’s venture capital access that is what holds them back.” In his view, the cash exists, particularly in the pension sector, but it needs to be put to more productive use, backing high-growth British firms.

Asked where the UK should concentrate its efforts, Spencer pointed to quantum sensing and components. Industry voices, he said, consistently stress the importance of carving out distinctive niches rather than trying to compete head-on across the whole technology stack.

“In quantum sensing and components, we are world leaders. Industry tells me we should specialise in big windows, like Taiwan does in chips. So we become indispensable in key niches.”

Yet even with clear areas of strength, Spencer warned that the fundamentals cannot be ignored.

“We need cheap energy, domestic compute, a workforce that knows how to do this stuff.” Pressed on whether that meant banking on fossil fuels, he was clear. “Well, I think we need fossil fuels. What’s more crazy, digging oil and gas out of Norway and then paying and using carbon to import it to the UK and send the money and the jobs and the tax to Norway, or to use our own oil fields? We have to transport it less, therefore using less carbon. Whether we tap the North Sea oil and gas or not, it’s not going to change the consumption of oil and gas. Yeah, it’s a basic commodity that we need.”

“Industry tells me we should specialise in big windows, so we become indispensable in key niches.”

Ben Spencer MP

Spencer has also made it clear he backs the UK’s net zero ambition, but frames it as a transition. That position is broadly in line with government policy, which continues to approve new North Sea licences while also backing offshore wind, small modular reactors, hydrogen, and carbon capture. But there is a potential tension here. If Britain wants data centres and domestic compute to be treated as critical infrastructure, then the energy system that underpins them must expand rapidly without derailing climate targets.

Regulation, too, is an area where Spencer urged caution. With the government preparing to introduce a new Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, he warned against the risks.

“If they define it loosely, everything comes into scope and before you know it you’ve got a bill which either regulates everything or is entirely meaningless,” he said. For Spencer the challenge is to strike a balance between giving business clarity and protecting critical systems without stifling the very innovation policymakers want to encourage.

For all his confidence that Britain can move beyond its reputation for invention without scale, Spencer was careful not to stray into specific policy commitments. In opposition, that caution is understandable, but unhelpful. It leaves questions hanging. If sovereignty is to mean more than rhetoric and if it is to become the framework that turns R&D into sovereign industries, then the hard choices on capital, energy, and regulation will have to come from somewhere.