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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has developed a strategy for the development of new quantum technologies.

As part of the UK Industrial Strategy, government will be refreshing the 2015 national strategy for quantum technologies in collaboration with National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP) partners.

This will follow a refresh of the programme’s governance arrangements, in response to the scale of private investment anticipated under phase 2 of the 10-year NQTP.

In Autumn Statement 2013, the UK government announced an investment of £270m over five years into the first phase of the NQTP, intended to move quantum technology out of laboratories and into the marketplace, to boost British business and make a real difference to everyday lives.

The national strategy itself was drawn up in 2015 by the Quantum Technologies Strategic Advisory Board (QT SAB). It was published by Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and its recommendations are delivered mainly through the work of the NQTP. In 2018, the UK government committed a further £315m (subject to business case approval) towards the second phase – due to start in 2019.

The strategy aims to create a coherent government, industry and academic community that will give the UK a world-leading position in the emerging multi-billion-pound quantum technology markets, delivering transformational improvements across areas as diverse as sensing, imaging, computing and communications, and substantially enhancing the value of some of the biggest UK-based industries such as finance, defence, aerospace, energy and telecommunications.