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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 25 March 2021 to Question 173015, what factors a programme manager will consider when setting ARIA ambitions.

ARIA’s leadership will have the autonomy to choose which programmes they fund and how they fund them to best deliver long-term, transformational advances in science and technology. As detailed in the ARIA Bill, in exercising its functions ARIA will have regard to the desirability of:

1. contributing to economic growth, or an economic benefit, in the United Kingdom,
2. promoting scientific innovation and invention in the United Kingdom,
3. improving the quality of life in the United Kingdom (or in the United Kingdom and elsewhere).

BEIS will not set specific criteria for strategic funding decisions or for the goals of Programme Managers.