An initiative in the budget yesterday to set up a UK ARPA was said to have been inspired by Dominic Cummings.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak (pictured) said the government will spend £800 million to create a blue skies R&D funding agency along the lines of ARPA.

“We are the country of Newton, Hodgson, and Turing,” said Sunak, “ours is a country of ideas, invention and discovery and is truly a national history. To compete and succeed over the next decade and beyond, we need to recapture that spirit.”

It is envisaged that the agency will fund projects which have a high risk of failure – which commercial backers wouldn’t touch – and that the projects will address big, long-term, societal issues.

It will have no specific research targets.