The UKRI monopoly risks stifling innovation

This article makes an excellent point. The problem that I see is that government policy makers and businesses are essentially short term in nature (few ministers, or CEOs last more than five years). Furthermore the economics profession has signally failed to value basic research in a way that leads to effective policies to promote it. This is not an insoluble problem and is recognised in some universities. It needs creative thinking to agree a way to allocate a proportion of research funding to longer term and often poorly defined goals. This has worked, before, with some spectacular results!