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 Government's policy paper, Collaboration on Science and Innovation: Future Partnership Paper, published on 6 September 2017, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Scotland on the potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on the future of the Centre for Applied Photonics at the University of Strathclyde.

The Scottish Office met recently with the Principal at the Centre of Photonics for Applied Photonics at the University of Strathclyde.

The Centre for Applied Photonics is one of around 20 Fraunhofer Research Centres based around the world, including countries outside the EU, such as the Fraunhofer USA Center for Sustainable Energy Systems and the Faunhofer Center for Solar Energy Technologies in Chile. Fraunhofer Centres act in the same way as the Fraunhofer Institutes do in Germany, and form an integral part of a country’s innovation system while maintaining the core Fraunhofer principles and business model. Location in an EU member state is not a requirement for a Fraunhofer Centre.

Science and research are vital to our country’s prosperity, security and wellbeing, and are at the heart of our industrial strategy. As part of our commitment to the science base, we have already increased research and development investment by £4.7 billion over the period 2017-18 to 2020-21. This equates to an extra £2 billion per year by 2020-21 and is an increase of around 20% to total government R&D spending. Furthermore, the Government has guaranteed to underwrite the payments of any successful bids for competitive EU funding, such as funding from Horizon 2020, submitted by UK businesses and universities while we remain a member of the EU.