UK DARPA Clone Spared Savings Squeeze While Treasury Raided Government

ARIA – the UK science and technology agency inspired by DARPA in the US – was not asked to make savings leading up to the Spending Review, unlike other government departments.

With the UK facing a no-win choice between increased borrowing, spending cuts, and tax rises, departments were told [PDF] before the Spending Review in June that they were expected to identify "a minimum of 5 percent savings and efficiencies against their current budgets." But ARIA was exempt from this request, a committee of MPs heard this week.

Parliament's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee asked whether HM Treasury or DSIT – the department sponsoring ARIA – had asked the agency to make savings or return any unspent portion of its £800 million allocation.

With both Matt Clifford, ARIA chair, and Ilan Gur, its CEO, in attendance, Kit Malthouse, a Conservative MP, said that in the run-up to the Spending Review there was a widespread in-year attempt at savings in all departments. "The Treasury was looking for any money it could grab. Did you get a call from finance at DSIT saying we need you to find some economies?"

"No," Clifford said. "We've not had any problems in this regard at all." Gur agreed that he was not aware of any request of this nature from DSIT.

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency – to give its full name – was announced in 2021, but was not formally established until January 2023. A product of Boris Johnson's post-Brexit Conservative government, the agency is designed to fund transformational research, with a so-called high risk, high reward approach.

Its initial five-year funding at £800 million was set to last until the end of the 2025/26 financial year. However, the Spending Review increased that figure to £1 billion and extended the period it covers until the end of 2028-29.

Gur said there had been "intensive scrutiny from Treasury around our budget as part of the Spending Review process, strategically." ARIA was not required to justify its spending on a project-by-project basis, since its initial business case had been approved, he explained.

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In August, Research Professional News revealed that ARIA had spent just £16.5 million on research in its first two years, and is on course to have almost £600 million of its initial budget left over by the end of the current financial year.

Committee chair Chi Onwurah asked if this was the spending profile ARIA had expected from the outset.

Gur responded: "The reality is, we established the agency in January 2023, there was really clear intent from both Parliament and Government in terms of both the nature and the scale of the agency we should set up. We tried to quickly and aggressively stand up an organisation which, first and foremost, could have a culture and a set of processes that could balance risk-taking and accountability, but then could be built for that scale.

"We had a core team and program directors in place in August [2023], which was pretty fast. Opportunity spaces were all launched in that first year from August, setting out roughly £400 million of commitments, which are now being spent in these programs that are three to five years long, and being spent incrementally. The short answer is, this is exactly as expected in terms of the timeline and scale." ®