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 page 174 of the Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper, which notes that the Innovation Accelerators may have to work with partners outside of their immediate geography, whether his Department plans to put in place limits to the funding shared with partners in the Greater South East.

The IAs will be centred on the three city regions, but partnerships will have flexibility to expand the reach of their activity to surrounding areas if desired. The £100m of R&D funding for the Accelerators will be awarded through a process run by UKRI and will support high quality R&D projects to grow local innovation ecosystems in the three pilot areas.