GERD Increased By 5%

Gross domestic expenditure on research and development increased by 5% in 2011 to £27.4bn according to the ONS. When adjustments are made for inflation the increase is 2% compared with 2010.

The business sector made by far the biggest increase in current price terms with an increase of 8% to £17.4bn compared with 2010 and 6% when adjustments are made for inflation. Research in higher education, including universities higher education institutes also increased by 2% to £7.1bn compared with 2010 and after adjustments for inflation the increase is 0.2%.

Government and research councils, including Defra and the Department of Health and the 7 research councils, accounted for 9% of total expenditure. The research councils R&D expenditure fell by 11% from £1.2bn in 2010 to £1bn in 2011.

Private non-profit organisations which includes charities and trusts in mainly health and medical research include some of the biggest in the world. It is the smallest R&D sector in the UK spending £0.5bn or 2% of total UK R&D spend in 2011.

Gross national expenditure on R&D can also be divided between the civil and defence sectors. The civil sector accounted for 93% of R&D expenditure in 2011, a total of £25.4bn an increase of 5%.

Business Research And Development

Total research and development expenditure in cash terms in business in 2009 totalled £15.6bn, that is a fall of 2.5% on 2008. The ONS sub-divides business R & D into civil and defence spending. Civil R & D expenditure decreased by 1.4% to £13.7bn and defence expenditure decreased by 10.2% to £1.9bn. In real terms total expenditure decreased by 4.1% to £15.6bn within which civil expenditure decreased by 3% to £13.7bn.

The product group with the highest R & D performance was pharmaceuticals at £4.4bn or 28.4% of all spending. Other significant product groups included aerospace (£1.5bn), computers (£1.5bn), motor vehicles and parts (£1.1bn) and telecommunications (£1.1bn). The region with the highest performance in terms of expenditure was the East of England (24.9%), the South East (23%) and the North West (13.1%) and the lowest in England was the North East (2%) and in the UK N. Ireland (1.9%). In terms of employment, the South East was highest employing the most people in R & D with 35,000, the East of England employed 30,000. The North East, Wales and N. Ireland employed the least at 4,000 each.

Increase In R & D Spend

Gross domestic expenditure on research and development increased by 3% in 2008 to £25.6bn from £24.9bn in 2007. In real terms it is about the same. R & D expenditure in 2008 amounted to about 1.79% of GDP which was a small increase on the 1.76% of 2007.

The main performers carrying out R & D in the UK in 2008 were business enterprise up 2% on 2007 to £15.9bn, higher education up 4% to £6.8bn, Government up 4% to £1.3bn research councils up 1% to £1bn and private non-profit organisations up 8% to £0.6bn.

Business enterprise was also main provider of funds with a total of £11.6bn amounting to 45% of all R & D, £2.3bn of which went abroad. The Government provided 31% of funding of all R & D. The figure includes higher education and research councils.