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 promote innovation in (a) south east England and (b) nationally.

Innovate UK has invested around £1.8 billion in innovation; supporting 7,600 UK businesses and creating around 55,000 new jobs. We are supporting more companies to innovate through R&D Tax Credits; with claims rising to £2.45bn in 2014-15.

In London and South East England, the Cell and Gene Therapy; Future Cities; and the Digital Catapults have been established to commercialise new and emerging technologies where there are large global market opportunities. And companies are already benefitting from our support. For example; Dearman, based in Croydon, won an inspirational SME innovation award recently for its clean cold and power technologies.