Asked by: Anthony Browne (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans he has to update the UK's Nationally Determined Contribution in advance of COP27.
Answered by Greg Hands
The UK is encouraging all countries to revisit and strengthen their 2030 targets as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022, following the agreement reached in the Glasgow Climate Pact.
Asked by: Anthony Browne (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what his Department's financial investment in (a) cancer research and (b) dementia research has been per year since 2015.
Answered by George Freeman
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a partner organisation of BEIS, funds research relating to cancer and dementia across all UKRI councils.
Spend data is presented instead of commitment data to avoid misrepresenting grants that are subject to multi-year funding that are allocated in a single year but spent across several years. This results in uneven distribution of the funding allocations data with apparent spikes and certain years followed by no funding allocation being recorded in subsequent years.
Cancer research
Year | 2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 |
UKRI spend £m | 1.9 | 120.7 | 113.1 | 116.0 | 121.3 | 3.7 |
Dementia research
Year | 2015/16 | 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 |
UKRI spend £m | 65.5 | 44.0 | 39.8 | 53.2 | 47.4 | 7.3 |
Notes on cancer research figures
Notes on dementia research figures
Asked by: Anthony Browne (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
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 any plans for regulation by Ofgem of energy providers' purchase price from private solar export systems under the Smart Export Guarantee scheme.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), introduced in January 2020, ensures that small-scale generators have a guaranteed access to the market while enabling electricity suppliers and other market participants to innovate in this area. To provide space for this small-scale export market to develop and to promote innovation, the legislation sets out no specified minimum tariff rate, other than that a supplier must provide payment greater than zero at all times of export.
The SEG has been successful in bringing forward a range of competitive and innovative offerings to the market, with small-scale renewable generators having several tariffs to choose from, including several that are higher than the fixed export rate mandated by the previous Feed-in Tariffs scheme.
Ofgem are to publish their first report on the provisions made by suppliers for smaller scale exports in the summer. We will review this to monitor whether the market is delivering an effective, competitive and innovative range of options.
Asked by: Anthony Browne (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has any plans to mandate a reduction in (a) plastic and (b) other non-degradable content in fireworks sold in the UK.
Answered by Paul Scully
Fireworks placed on the market must be safe. The Government welcomes the reduction of the use of plastics in fireworks and initiatives underway by the fireworks industry. We are not at present planning any other action to mandate a reduction in the use of plastic or other non-degradable content in fireworks sold in the UK.
Asked by: Anthony Browne (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
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 ensure that PhD students from the EU wish to study in the UK after the increase in student visa costs from January 2021.
Answered by Amanda Solloway
The UK will continue to be a welcoming and world-class destination for all students, including international and European PhD candidates who will be treated equally under the new system. The UK has an internationally recognised higher education system attracting high quality students, a strong research base, excellent research across disciplines, entrepreneurs, practitioners and a high level of international collaboration and investment.
From the start of 2021/2022 academic year, all international students, including those from the EU, EEA and Switzerland, will be able to apply for UK Research and Innovation funded studentships. This will allow international students access to the same level of financial support as a home student in the same programme.
The new Graduate Route allows international students who complete a PhD in the UK from summer 2021 to stay in the UK for three years after study to live and work. The Graduate Route also enables students who have successfully completed undergraduate and master's degrees to stay for 2 years after study. This will make it easier for some of the best, international graduates to secure skilled jobs in the UK. We will continue to make this route simpler and faster.
Asked by: Anthony Browne (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
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 are taking to ensure that the UK life sciences sector continues to have access to (a) research funding and (b) collaborative working opportunities with European partners after 31 December 2020.
Answered by Amanda Solloway
The Government values the strong collaborative partnerships that we have across Europe and the globe in the areas of science, research and innovation and wants to continue to support these opportunities. My Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the March Budget that Government investment in R&D will increase to £22bn by 2024/25, the biggest-ever absolute increase.
The UK is open to participation in Horizon Europe if we can agree a fair and balanced deal. We will make a final decision once it is clear whether such terms can be reached.
If we do not formally associate to Horizon Europe or Euratom R&T, we will implement ambitious alternatives as quickly as possible from January 2021 and address the funding gap. Alternatives to Horizon Europe will address discovery, or ‘curiosity-led’ research, global collaboration and innovation. Under all scenarios it is our aim that UK organisations and entities continue to participate in Horizon Europe collaborative projects open to third countries, as well as in wider international collaborations. This applies across all eligible R&D including life sciences. Funding for EU programmes or for alternatives would be subject to allocations at the Spending Review.
Asked by: Anthony Browne (Conservative - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much funding each university in the UK has received from (a) the Chinese Government, (b) other Chinese state authorities and (c) companies based in China.
Answered by Amanda Solloway
Universities in the UK are independent organisations. The Government does not collect data of this sort.
Higher education providers in the UK are required to submit certain categories of data to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). This is published annually at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/finances. This includes their overall income from a variety of sources and for a range of different activities, including teaching, research and commercial. This includes research grant and contract income from business. However, HESA data does not indicate the individual businesses concerned.