Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many awards have been made under his Department's Innovation Challenge Fund; and what the value of those awards was.

The Ministry of Defence has established an Innovation Fund of around £800 million over 10 years, to provide the freedom to pursue and deliver innovative solutions. The Fund will take forward the best ideas, from inside and outside of Defence, in an open competitive process. The Innovation Fund will be open for bids early in 2017. This will allow the best ideas to be selected in time for the first funds to be disbursed in April 2017.

The prospectus for the Defence Innovation Initiative is available at www.gov.uk at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advantage-through-innovation-the-defence-innovation-initiative-prospectus