Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Written Statement of 21 November 2022, HCWS 376 on Programmes: Announcement of £484 million immediate investment for the UK R&D and fusion sectors, from which budget that funding will be drawn; and whether he expects that funding would be impacted by the UK's potential future participation in Horizon Europe.
Answered by George Freeman
The Government’s preference remains association to Horizon Europe and while we push for association, we must also invest in the UK’s world leading R&D sector.
At the 2021 Spending Review, the Government committed to funding association to EU R&D programmes, including Horizon Europe and that if the UK is unable to associate to Horizon Europe, the funding allocated to association will go to UK government R&D programmes.
As a result of the EU’s delays, the Government are making an immediate investment from the EU programme funding allocation to support the UK R&D sector as we continue to pursue association.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Written Statement of 21 November 2022, HCWS 376 on Programmes: Announcement of £484 million immediate investment for the UK R&D and fusion sectors, whether that funding represents an alternative to the UK's future participation in Horizon Europe.
Answered by George Freeman
The Government’s preference remains association to Horizon Europe and while we push for association, we must also invest in the UK’s world leading R&D sector.
At the 2021 Spending Review, the Government committed to funding association to EU R&D programmes, including Horizon Europe and that if the UK is unable to associate to Horizon Europe, the funding allocated to association will go to UK government R&D programmes.
As a result of the EU’s delays, the Government are making an immediate investment from the EU programme funding allocation to support the UK R&D sector as we continue to pursue association.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the ONS data on Business Gross domestic expenditure on research and development, published 22 November 2022, for what reason regional data on spend is no longer available; and whether he plans to ask the ONS to help provide that information.
Answered by George Freeman
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is an independent body, and this update is part of a wider programme of work to improve economic statistics and data capture. The ONS published estimates of country and regional breakdown of expenditure on R&D in the UK by sector of performance for 2018, 2019 and 2020 in table 4 of their Gross Expenditure on R&D release on 22 November 2022, with business enterprise R&D shown separately and with English regions aggregated into three groups.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is in contact with the ONS and they intend to publish further detailed data on regional spend in due course.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to Paragraph 5.65 of the Autumn Statement 2022, CP 751 published on 17 October 2022, whether the Government plans to create new Catapults in the next 12 months.
Answered by George Freeman
The £1.6bn funding announced on 17 November 2022 will allow Innovate UK to fund the UK’s Catapult Network to continue supporting innovation and de-risking the transition from research to commercialisation by providing access to world-leading facilities, skills, and equipment across the UK.
Innovate UK are responsible for ensuring the UK’s Catapult Networks are maximising industrial R&D, co-investment and benefit to the UK economy and any new Catapults would need to be assessed against criteria for new Catapults to ensure they are addressing market failures or clear strategic opportunities and would be subject to sustainable funding plus Ministerial agreement.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the impact of ONS's decision not to publish a calculation of R&D as a percentage of GDP; and what assessment he made of the impact of only knowing the overall effect on GDP at the end of 2023.
Answered by George Freeman
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is an independent body, and this update is part of a wider programme of work to improve economic statistics and data capture. Its 22 November 2022 release estimated that £59.7bn was invested in UK R&D in 2019, increasing to £61.8bn in 2020. The ONS has not published R&D as a percentage of GDP, to make clear that they have not yet incorporated the improvements to the measurement of R&D in the business and higher education sectors into the calculations of GDP.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) understands the complexity and timelines involved in feeding the R&D changes through to GDP as part of National Accounts and looks forward to this calculation in due course. If the ONS had made the calculation, BEIS believes it would have produced a figure between 2.6% and 2.7% of GDP for 2019 and between 2.9% and 3.0% for 2020.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Written Statement of 21 November 2022, HCWS 376 on Programmes: Announcement of £484 million immediate investment for the UK R&D and fusion sectors, which body will decide (a) eligibly for and (b) which organisations will receive that funding.
Answered by George Freeman
As announced on 21st November, £484 million in targeted investment will provide immediate funding to the UK R&D sector whilst UK association to European Research Programs continues to be blocked. The Government’s preference remains association to Horizon Europe and we continue to do everything we can to achieve this, but we cannot stand by and allow UK research to suffer.
The package aims to target support at universities and research organisations affected by the EU’s continued refusal to finalise the UK’s association to EU programmes. All aspects of the programme will be delivered by existing trusted and experienced UK delivery partners, such as UKRI who are experienced at delivering R&D funding at scale.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 14 November to Question 83815 on Energy Price Guarantee, what electricity and gas meter personal data is collected through the Energy Price Guarantee scheme.
Answered by Graham Stuart
BEIS does not currently collect, hold or process any personal data through the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) scheme. The scope of the data required to support the EPG scheme and how regularly it is collected and processed is still being defined.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to para 5.65 of the Autumn Statement, CP 751, published on 17 November 2022, whether any new Catapults will be created.
Answered by George Freeman
The £1.6bn funding announced on 17 November 2022 will allow Innovate UK to fund the UK’s 9 Catapults to continue supporting innovation and de-risking the transition from research to commercialisation by providing access to world-leading facilities, skills, and equipment across the UK.
Innovate UK are responsible for ensuring the UK’s 9 Catapults are maximising industrial R&D, co-investment and benefit to the UK economy and any new Catapults would need to be assessed against criteria for new Catapults to ensure they are addressing market failures or clear strategic opportunities and would be subject to sustainable funding plus Ministerial agreement.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to paras 3.27 and 5.65 of the Autumn Statement, CP 751, published on 17 November 2022, whether the extra funding for UK Catapults is included within the commitment that public spending on R&D will increase to £20 billion a year by 2024-25.
Answered by George Freeman
The £1.6bn funding announced for the UK’s 9 Catapults on 17 November 2022 is for the Catapults’ five-year funding cycle starting April 2023 and running until March 2028. Therefore, part of this is included in the Government’s commitments for public spending on R&D reaching £20bn by 2024/25, whereas the funding from 2025/26 onwards is additional. Funding for the Catapults up to 2024/25 will come out of current budgets agreed in the 2021 spending review (SR) with funding beyond this SR being a first call on Innovate UK’s future SR settlements.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Office for National Statistics dataset entitled Business enterprise research and development, UK, published on 22 November 2022, whether his Department has made an assessment of the impact of that dataset’s aggregation of regions into single figures on the ability of his Department to evaluate the impact of (a) local and (b) regional research and development investment; and if he will take steps to ensure the ONS provides more detailed data.
Answered by George Freeman
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is an independent body, and this update is part of a wider programme of work to improve economic statistics and data capture. The ONS published estimates of country and regional breakdown of expenditure on R&D in the UK by sector of performance for 2018, 2019 and 2020 in table 4 of their Gross Expenditure on R&D release on 22 November 2022, with business enterprise R&D shown separately and with English regions aggregated into three groups.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is in contact with the ONS and they intend to publish further detailed data on regional spend in due course.