Dr. Tom McDonnell:

The first thing is to pay for it, which we do not do relative to other northern and western European countries. The deficit of public research and development is €1.2 billion. It is in the education sector and is very specific. It is also about developing an innovation system including the private sector and the higher level sector. There is scope for innovation and productivity gains in the public sector as well. Technological change and digitalisation in the health service is an obvious one. There are things that can be done. In relation to Mazzucato, it is about thinking of the State as not just a passive referee but an active player in the game with the confidence to do that. It is the notion of an entrepreneurial state. It is not just a passive state. It is inculcating high-potential startups that come out of university sector.

It is helping to fund them through equity stakes. Because it is the state, it can take on risk in a way the private sector often will not or will not without the state being involved as well. Often, the private sector is happy to wade in if there is a state actor there too because it gives it surety to a certain extent. What a state has is scale. It can take a lot of gambles knowing that many of those gambles are going to fail. We underproduce both knowledge and innovation because you can never know for sure in advance, almost by definition, whether something is going to work because you are trying to find new knowledge. You do not know if something is going to work, whatever it might be, whether it is in biotech or some other area. A state can take a lot of risks and can reduce the risks for the private sector. It is that more entrepreneurial state role which we would see as being very important.