Declining patent filings show Britain has stopped innovating
There are lots of ways to measure innovation, but if we go by patent filings, it’s a sorry image for the UK, writes Ayushma Maharjan
Britain’s days as the home of the Industrial Revolution are long gone. But many people still cling to the narrative that we are the home of ideas. It’s okay if we no longer make as much as we used to. We’re still inventing, designing and creating things that can be made elsewhere.
But what if that isn’t actually true?
There are lots of ways to measure innovation. But on one important metric, patent filings, the picture is deeply worrying.
Britain is still a country of brilliant universities and ideas – between 2000 and 2025, we generated more Nobel Prizes in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects than any other country bar the US. The problem is that fewer and fewer new ideas are being put to commercial use.
In the 1990s, the total number of patent applications filed in Britain averaged 29,000 a year. In the 2010s, this fell to around 22,000. So far in the 202spi0s, the average is barely 19,500. We are the only G7 country where patents by domestic inventors are below 1980s levels, down by 43 per cent.
The per capita figures are just as depressing. In 2000, there were 727 patent applications originating from the UK per million people. Today, that has fallen to 677. Meanwhile, other countries have surged ahead. On a per capita basis, China files 90 per cent more patents than the UK. In Singapore, that figure rises to 150 per cent; in Japan 400 per cent; and in South Korea, an extraordinary 745 per cent.
Our relative weakness is also increasingly visible in the industries that will matter the most. In frontier sectors such as semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, Britain is struggling to convert research strength into industrial capability. Even in artificial intelligence – where the UK attracts substantial investment, produces world-class start-ups and has had the explicit backing of successive governments – patenting rates remain among the lowest per capita.
The standard explanation would be that we aren’t spending enough. But that just isn’t true – we’ve poured money into R&D. The problem is where that innovation happens.
Why isn’t investment translating into patents?
In the UK, just 69 per cent of R&D is performed by the private sector. In the US, South Korea and China, that figure is closer to 80 per cent. For every dollar spent on university research, top-performing countries generate $7 to $9 of business R&D. In Britain, the number is less than $3.
Universities are essential for discovery. But it is businesses that turn ideas into scalable products, exports and jobs. Without strong private-sector participation, innovation doesn’t translate into growth.
Unfortunately, there is little sign things are about to change any time soon.
Across manufacturing and tech, firms point to high energy costs, planning bottlenecks, infrastructure gaps and unpredictable regulation as persistent barriers to scaling in Britain. Astrazeneca and Merck have scaled back investment and closed UK laboratory sites, citing tax uncertainty, regulatory delays and a slow clinical trials system.
Even the UK’s greatest strengths expose the problem. Oxford and Cambridge consistently rank among the world’s top five universities, yet their surrounding regions – strangled by planning constraints – rank only 77th and 69th among the world’s top 100 innovation clusters.
The result is predictable. Startups do emerge from our shores, but many relocate abroad or are acquired before they reach scale. Around six per cent of UK startups emigrate, while most university spinout IPOs now take place overseas, particularly on the Nasdaq exchange in New York. Britain generates ideas but too often exports the economic value they create.
The broader picture is equally concerning. Only 36 per cent of UK firms reported any innovation activity between 2020 and 2022 – the lowest level in over a decade. No UK-based organisation appeared among the world’s top 100 global innovators in 2025. The country is also no longer a top 10 manufacturing nation.
To reiterate: this is not happening for lack of policy attention. The UK offers some of the most generous public support for business R&D in the developed world, worth around 0.48 per cent of GDP and more than double the OECD average. The government’s latest industrial strategy and technology plans attempt to address everything from scale-up finance to university-industry collaboration.
And yet business investment in innovation continues to lag. The problem is not the absence of ideas, funding schemes or strategies. It is the business environment.
Firms will only invest, build and scale in Britain if the conditions make sense. That means competitive energy costs, faster planning decisions, reliable infrastructure and a regulatory system that is predictable rather than burdensome. It means a tax environment that rewards long-term investment rather than penalising it.
Until those fundamentals improve, Britain will continue to produce world-class research – but watch as other countries turn it into world-leading industries.
Ayushma Maharjan is a researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies