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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment his Department has made of differences in Research England funding between the (a) North East and (b) east of England.

Research England Quality-related Research funding is allocated largely on the basis of the volume of highest quality research as assessed by REF2014. Through the “Expanding Excellence in England” programme, Research England is seeking to grow excellent research capacity where excellence exists but is currently at a small scale with potential for growth.

UKRI are publishing detailed breakdowns of their funding data at a regional level annually to increase transparency of how places benefit from R&D funding. The latest available data is at: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/what-we-have-funded/regional-distribution-of-funding/2018-to-2019-regional-distribution-of-funding/#contents-list.