The Government should carry out a review, commencing before the end of the next financial year (i.e. 2021–2022), to explore how UKRI can operate with fewer bureaucratic constraints and more freedom and flexibility in how it allocates funds, while ensuring that it is held accountable for its expenditure. Specifically, it should consider (i) the implications of modifying or removing UKRI’s requirement to seek Ministerial approval, on a case-by-case basis, for anything deemed ‘novel’ or ‘contentious’, (ii) the extent to which the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund’s ‘challenge directors’ have been unnecessarily hampered by bureaucratic constraints in their work and whether this can be addressed, (iii) UKRI’s capacity to tackle the UK’s strategic challenges through its coordination of public and private sector research and innovation, and finally (iv) how effectively UKRI facilitates interdisciplinary research and the scope for improving it.