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 assess the extent of the research and development potential of locations across the UK.

BEIS will aim to invest 55% of its R&D budget outside the Greater South East by 2024/25. We have also given UKRI a new organisational objective to increase consideration of local growth criteria and impact in R&D fund design. These measures will help to ensure that high potential R&D clusters across the UK see the benefit from our record uplift in R&D investment to £20 billion by 2024/25.