Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

No, not necessarily at all. We spend our ODA in different ways, and different Departments have relatively small pools of ODA. Of course, the great majority of it goes through DFID. Where GNI contracts and the ODA budget needs to be trimmed accordingly, we will look to take away the lowest-value ODA spending. I think that that is the way the taxpayer would expect it to be done.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

Further to the Chancellor’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), could he set out how QuestUAV in Amble, a manufacturer of mapping and survey drones, and other high-tech north-east businesses will be able to access the R and D funding that he talks about?

[Mr Hammond]

Public R and D funding will take two principal forms. There will be further funding to the science base in our universities, and there will be funding through Innovate UK, which is accessible by companies to support innovation. We already have an excellent base in basic science. What we need to do now is to up our game in innovation and the application of that science.