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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of public sector funding for research and development; and if he will make an assessment of that funding on private sector investment in research and development at all stages of research.

BEIS has published research by Oxford Economics on the relationship between public and private funding of research and development (R&D) at which estimated the monetary impact of the long-run leverage rate, suggesting that each £1 of public R&D eventually stimulates between £1.96 and £2.34 of private R&D:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-and-development-relationship-between-public-and-private-funding.

Public investment in R&D underpins long-term economic growth, is a vital component in our plan for achieving Net Zero and ensures the long-term defence and security of the UK by keeping us at the forefront of technological capabilities. This is why, at the last Spending Review, the Government announced the largest ever sustained uplift in public R&D spending.