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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether the £60 million funding to expand life sciences manufacturing announced on 2 March 2022 will be subject to his Department’s commitment on page 173 of the Levelling Up White Paper to spend at least 55 per cent of research and development funding outside the Greater South East.

The objective of the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF) is to incentivise capital investments in manufacturing across the UK. Applicants will be encouraged to describe R&D aspects of their manufacturing proposal as part of the Fund’s economic assessment. 75% of life sciences manufacturing jobs are located outside of London and England’s South-East and we expect the LSIMF to create highly-skilled jobs across all regions of the UK.