Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much funding the Government plans to allocate from the public purse for the Next Generation of Services project; and whether that funding will be drawn from monies allocated for the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

We will invest £725m in Wave 2 of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund over the next four years. We announced six new Challenges in wave 2 and two Pioneer Challenges to build industry engagement and readiness for future funding. Up to £20m Pioneer funding has been allocated from the ISCF programme for a Challenge to develop the Next Generation of Services through the application of AI and data driven innovation.