Seems familiar

Amongst the things announced in yesterday’s budget was a £100 million competition for collaborative R&D

And the Secretary for Industry is also today announcing a £100 million competition for Britain to lead in high tech innovation – challenging universities and businesses to come together, from medical research to environmental transport, to convert British scientific breakthroughs into British commercial success and jobs.

That DTI announcement is somewhat more circumspect. Look on the website of the government programme running this exercise and you might notice that some of the topics highlighted in the government press release (such as low-carbon energy and plastic electronics) are already targeted. In practice, this is an expansion of on-going activity rather than a new competition in the sense that most people would understand ‘new competition’.