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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to encourage commercial investment in deep science ventures; what incentives the Government has in place to support such investment; and if he will make a statement.

The Industrial Strategy sets out our plan to make the UK the World’s most innovative economy, building on our global leadership in science and research. We are supporting the Industrial Strategy ambition to raise the total R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027, and 3% in the longer-term. The Government will invest an additional £7bn in R&D by 2020/2021. This will be the largest increase ever.

The 2018 Budget allocated £1.6 billion of funding towards boosting transformative technologies, backing UK scientists and industry at the frontier of innovation. We are also supporting more companies to do research and development through the UK’s R&D Tax Credits Scheme.

The Government is supporting research commercialisation and collaboration between university, business and charities through several significant investments. These include:

• providing support for the creation of new research centres and facilities through the £900m UK Research Partnership Investment Fund; and funding for the Catapult network.
• increasing Higher Education Innovation Funding to £250m pa by 2021 (to underpin universities capacity to work with business), and providing £100m for Connecting Capability Fund enabling universities to collaborate together, to pool resources and capability to make it easier for investors and business to access;
• as well as through established Research Council and Innovate UK mechanisms.

British Patient Capital Ltd, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank has been given resources of £2.5bn over the next 10 years to support venture and growth capital funds to make longer-term investments in innovative UK-based businesses with high growth potential.

We are encouraging long-term investment into R&D, with £1.7bn invested in strategic research programmes through the first two waves of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. These challenges have been developed to broadly align with the Grand Challenges: Clean Growth, AI and Data, Ageing Society and the Future of Mobility, society-changing opportunities and industries of the future. We are also working in partnership with businesses to develop Sector Deals that will create significant opportunities to boost productivity, employment, innovation and skills.