Science, Research and Innovation Capital Investment

Thursday 24th January 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

I am today setting out our plans for spending £600 million as part of our commitment to an industrial strategy for growth.

We have a broad, world-class science and research base in this country and this is clearly demonstrated in the research councils’ impact reports which are being published today. These reports illustrate the benefit to the economy and to society of the funding that we provide for science and research every year.

We identified eight key technologies to invest in, consulting with the research community and the Technology Strategy Board. To support these, the Chancellor announced £600 million of funding, mainly for capital investment, in his autumn statement. We have already announced how £28 million of this capital funding will be used to fund the National Composites Centre and £108 million will support the life science strategy through £38 million for the national biologies industry innovation centre, £20 million for regenerative medicine and £50 million for synthetic biology.

Today I am announcing details of how the remaining funds will be allocated.

£189 million of that funding will support big data. We will allocate a further £25 million to the highly successful National Space Technology Programme.

£45 million will support new facilities and equipment in areas of UK strength in advanced materials, including in high-performance alloys and low-energy electronics. In addition £35 million will create centres of excellence in robotics and autonomous systems in and around universities, innovation centres, science parks and enterprise sites.

£30 million will be allocated to create dedicated research and development facilities to develop and test new grid scale energy storage technologies. £25 million will build the Advanced Measurement Laboratory which will be a state-of-the-art laboratory for cutting-edge measurement research run by the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington.

Finally £65 million will be invested in our excellent research campuses with a further £50 million in transformative equipment and infrastructure to maintain the excellence of our research base.

In addition to this £600 million of capital funds, EPSRC are using existing budgets to make a £350 million investment in a new generation of centres for doctoral training. This is important as without highly skilled individuals in the workforce it will be impossible to bring innovative products and services to market.

I have also launched today a £l million competition funded by the Technology Strategy Board that will accelerate the development of robotics and autonomous systems in the UK.

ANNEX: Table showing breakdown of £600 million autumn statement investment in science and innovation*: