Asked by: Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
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.
Answered by Margot James
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.
Asked by: Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, with reference to paragraph 2.96 of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015, Cm 9162, published in November 2015, how many local authority areas her Department plans to deliver funding for new efficient heat networks.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 29 June, the Government published a consultation on a new major project to support investment in heat networks, the Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP).
The Heat Networks Investment Project is making up to £320m in capital support available to projects in England and Wales over the next five years, to increase the number of heat networks and to deliver cost-effective carbon savings.
The number of local authorities that will receive funding is dependent on the quality of applications received. We would expect that many of the 118 local authorities already supported by DECC’s Heat Network Delivery Unit (HNDU) on early stage development will apply for capital support.
Asked by: Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he is taking to tackle late payment of suppliers by businesses.
Answered by Anna Soubry
We are implementing a package of measures to support a cultural change to tackle late payment, including the Small Business Commissioner, the duty for large businesses to report on payment practices and support for the voluntary Prompt Payment Code. The Regulations to give effect to the duty to report will be laid for debate early in 2017.
Asked by: Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the recent proposals published by the Competition and Markets Authority on competition in the energy market on 22 April 2016.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Competition and Markets Authority has produced a strong package of provisional remedies which will help deliver a fair deal to all consumers. They build on action already taken by the Government to improve competition.
The Government will take forward appropriate implementation of the remedies once the Competition and Markets Authority has finalised its recommendations which are due by June.