Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, what assessment he has made of the contribution of university spin-out companies to regional economic growth.

University spinouts make an important contribution to regional economic growth, creating high-skilled jobs, attracting investment, and developing local innovation clusters.

Research England’s analysis of the new UK University spinout register (https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/business-community/spin-out-register) shows that spin-out formation broadly reflects the geographical distribution of university research capacity. Between 2013 and 2024 55% of spin-out activity was outside the Greater South East.

Across the spending review period, UK Research and Innovation is investing £7.4bn to support innovative companies’ and spin-out growth, including £284 million per year through the Higher Education Innovation Fund, and £30million through Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) to develop regional commercialisation ecosystems.