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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to harness science and innovation for the purposes of the Government’s levelling up agenda.

The Levelling Up White Paper sets out how we will maximise the contribution of innovation to levelling up by building on existing and emerging strengths across the country. This includes a commitment to increase public investment in R&D outside the Greater South East by at least one third over the Spending Review period and at least 40 percent by 2030; making levelling up one of the objectives of our R&D investment strategy and aiming for the regions outside the Greater South East to receive at least 55% of BEIS’ R&D budget by 2024/25; and investing £100 million as part of piloting new Innovation Accelerators supporting three UK city regions to become major, globally competitive centres for research and innovation.