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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will ringfence levies paid by the steel sector into the EU Research Fund for Coal and Steel and returned from the EU to the public purse for the establishment of a steel innovation fund.

At last year’s Spending Review, we set out plans for Government spending for 2021/22, to prioritise the Government’s response to Covid-19, and our focus on supporting jobs.

The Government recognises the importance of research and innovation in helping to transform the steel sector so that it can play a vital role in developing the UK’s economy. Our on-going support to the sector includes announcing £22m to the Materials Processing Institute in Teesside to deliver a R&D programme of transformative manufacturing, announcing a £250m Clean Steel Fund that to support the transition of the steel sector to new low carbon technologies, providing up to £66m through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to help steel and other foundation industries develop radical new technologies and establish innovation centres of excellence in these sectors, and the £315m  Industrial Energy Transformation Fund which supports the development and deployment of technologies to transition to a low carbon future.