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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what criteria his Department used to decide which areas would be chosen to work with the Government to develop their local industrial strategies.

We have committed to work with all Local Enterprise Partnerships and Mayoral Combined Authorities across England to develop Local Industrial Strategies.

Government will take a phased approach - in July we announced the next wave of six areas with which Government is working closely with on their Local Industrial Strategies. These were chosen to give us experience of working with a variety of areas.