Subsidy Control Act 2022

The Subsidy Control Act 2022 sits at the centre of the April 2026 CamGraPhIC story because it defines the UK's capacity to match or respond to EU state-aid decisions. When the European Commission approved €211m of Italian state aid for the Cambridge graphene photonics spinout, the Act was the implicit boundary condition: what the UK Government could or could not do to compete for that factory investment was governed by this legislation. The contrast is direct — the EU operating under its own state-aid framework approved a grant ten times the size of any previously awarded to a Cambridge spinout, while the UK's regime did not produce an equivalent instrument.

The Act replaced the EU State Aid framework that applied to the UK prior to the end of the Brexit transition period in January 2021. It introduced a principles-based subsidy regime rather than the EU's more prescriptive notification and approval structure. The legislation is overseen by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) through its Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU), which reviews subsidies referred by public authorities and advises on compliance with the Act's principles. The Act applies to all public authorities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It came into force in January 2023.

The Act is one of the foundational pieces of post-Brexit economic sovereignty legislation and a live test of whether a lighter-touch principles-based design produces competitive outcomes against the EU's prescriptive but well-funded framework. The CamGraPhIC outcome is an early and prominent data point in that test: a UK spinout whose IP was developed using UK public research funding ultimately secured its industrial capital under an EU-approved subsidy regime, not the UK's own.