Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to reallocate the £1.6bn of funding allocated to Horizon and Euratom association for the financial year 2022-2023.

The Government is committed to ensuring the UK is a Science Superpower. This is why, despite the challenging fiscal circumstances, the Chancellor recommitted at Autumn Statement 2022 to increase R&D spending to £20 billion in 24/25, a 30% cash increase from 2021/22 (the largest ever increase over a Spending Review period).

At Spending Review 2021, the Government set aside funding for the cost of associating to EU R&D programmes (Horizon, Euratom Research & Training and Fusion 4 Energy, and Copernicus), which was agreed with the EU in the December 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). Unfortunately, the EU has delayed the formalisation of the UK’s association due to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Our priority has been to support the UK R&D sector during this period of uncertainty. To mitigate EU delays, we have introduced the Horizon Guarantee as well as £684m of additional support for the R&D, fusion and Earth observation sectors.

The UK remains open to association to Horizon based on fair and reasonable terms and that the UK will only pay for the period of association to a programme. Any funding required for association in future years will be made available when there is clarity on UK association to EU programmes.