Influencing policy
As the voice of the innovative biotech industry, we influence government policy, the regulatory environment and the broader ecosystem to make the UK the best place for businesses to start, grow and deliver world-changing innovation.
We have strong links with Government and its agencies, and represent our members by working closely with:
- Engineering Biology Advisory Panel (EPAB)
- Responsible Innovation Advisory Panel (RIAP)
- Engineering Biology Regulators Network
There are regulatory and economic hurdles that must be cleared to build a sustainable bioeconomy driven by engineering biology. To best support our members, we are focusing our influencing work across four key strands: regulation, finance, infrastructure and biosecurity.
There are regulatory and economic hurdles that must be cleared to build a sustainable bioeconomy driven by engineering biology. To best support our members, we are focusing our influencing work across four key strands: regulation, finance, infrastructure and biosecurity.
In consultation with our biosolutions and engineering biology membership, we are working with Government to ensure that policies, such as the Digital and Technologies Sector Plan, and regulations support biosolutions companies to start and scale in the UK.
International links
Our engagement on biosolutions also extends internationally through our membership of EuropaBio and the European Biosolutions Coalition.
What BIA does
BIA works with industry, Government, parliamentarians and other stakeholders to delve deeper into and drive the implementation of our recommendations. Those activities are supported by our expert Engineering Biology Advisory Committee (EBAC) and growing BIA BioSolutions Community through which we ensure our members’ voice is heard on matters critical to the success of biosolutions.
Influencing snapshots
In late 2024, BIA wrote to Lord Vallance, Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation, calling for engineering biology and deep biotech to be prioritised as frontier technologies in the Government’s forthcoming industrial strategy, a request we doubled down on in our industrial strategy submission. BIA argued that these technologies have the potential to drive economic growth while enabling the UK’s net zero and green transition.
The letter highlighted the UK’s strengths in engineering biology, including its world-leading R&D base and thriving startups, which collectively raised over £5.2 billion between 2017 and 2022. However, BIA emphasised the need for coherent government support across regulation, finance and infrastructure to enable these companies to scale, establish strong UK foundations and drive forward the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy.
Lord Vallance’s team wrote back to BIA in early 2025, agreeing with our input, saying that the Government is committed to delivering the National Vision for Engineering Biology and the aim for the UK to have a broad, rich engineering biology ecosystem that can safely develop and commercialise the many opportunities to come from the technology and the underlying science.
In 2024, BIA expanded its influencing activities to support biosolutions companies by releasing the inaugural report entitled ‘Deep Biotech: Disruptive innovation for global sustainability’. To mark the beginning of BIA’s activities in the non-health space, we held a launch event kindly hosted by Osborne Clarke. This insightful panel brought together investors, innovative companies and government to discuss the potential of BioSolutions, previously named Deep Biotech, and the policy, regulatory and financial hurdles that will need to be overcome to enable a biorevolution.
Following the success of this initial work, BIA rebranded the platform to BioSolutions in early 2026 to better reflect the industrial application of these technologies. In April 2026, we will launch an updated edition of the report, featuring a fresh analysis of the UK investment landscape and new case studies. This ongoing work continues to provide the evidence base needed to champion the biosolutions community to policymakers and the wider bioeconomy.
BIA has been lead-advocating for a workable UK framework for the Nagoya Protocol, ensuring that international regulations on genetic resources do not stifle the UK’s engineering biology sector. We have consistently engaged with Defra and the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) to argue against mandatory financial "Access and Benefit Sharing" (ABS) for Digital Sequence Information (DSI). BIA highlighted that restrictive or high-cost mandatory models would create significant administrative barriers, particularly for SMEs moving from research to commercial scale.
Through our Engineering Biology Advisory Committee (EBAC), we provided technical evidence to the UK government to ensure that any new global framework remains voluntary and industry-led. By championing a balanced approach, BIA is helping to secure the UK’s position as a competitive destination for bio-innovation, ensuring companies can continue to access the data needed to develop sustainable solutions without facing disproportionate regulatory hurdles.
