Investment Support

Gareth Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Written Statements

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)]

The Chancellor is announcing new measures to drive innovation and help pension funds and other investors to invest in high-growth businesses.

This includes new vehicles tailored to the needs of pension funds to help them invest the capital unlocked through the Mansion House compact. The Government will provide £250 million to support successful bidders under the long-term investment for technology and science (LIFTS) initiative, subject to contract, and is confirming plans to launch a new growth fund within the British Business Bank to give pension funds access to investment opportunities in the UK’s most promising businesses,

In addition, the Chancellor is announcing new measures to support innovative businesses to access the finance they need to start and scale up. These include:

At least £50 million of additional funding for the British Business Bank’s successful ‘Future Fund: Breakthrough’ programme—that will provide direct investment to support the UK’s promising pipeline of R&D-intensive firms;

A venture capital fellowship scheme to support the next generation of world-leading investors in our renowned VC funds, similar to the successful US Kauffman fellowship; and

A £20 million investment to foster more spin-out companies that are created using research done in universities.

Spin-outs are start-up companies that are created based on intellectual property (IP) generated through a university’s research. The Government are announcing the publication of the independent review of spin-outs.^[1] The review has been led by two leaders in the field of academia and venture capital—Irene Tracey, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, and Andrew Williamson, managing partner of Cambridge Innovation Capital—and makes a series of recommendations to improve the performance of UK universities at spinning out companies.

The recommendations include best practice licensing deal terms—10-25% university equity for life sciences spin-outs, as per recently published guidance, and 10% or less for less IP-intensive sectors. The Chancellor is accepting all the recommendations and announcing £20 million for a new cross-disciplinary proof-of-concept research fund. This will help prospective founders in our universities demonstrate the commercial potential of their research. The full Government response will be published as part of the autumn statement.

^[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-university-spin-out-companies.

[HCWS58]