Horizon Europe

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests. The Minister indicated that we have got off to a good start in 2024, but that is particularly in terms of applications for European Research Council funding. The start has been less promising for Horizon pillar 2 funding, which requires collaboration between businesses and academia. What action do His Majesty’s Government propose to take to ensure that those kinds of relationships can once again be established and that we have a more successful approach to achieving that funding?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord is quite right that the numbers are looking more promising for 2024, particularly in the European Research Council mono-beneficiary schemes. In the collaborative and industry schemes, things still look fairly flat, although there are some examples of very good progress. In the European rail project, 61% in the most recent round had a UK participant and five out of the seven successful bids had UK participants, so there is some progress. We are doing a number of things: there is an increased communications campaign, the last one having led to a substantial increase of 64,000 hits on the UK Horizon website; there are roadshows, most recently in Birmingham and Glasgow and soon in Northern Ireland and Wales; there are pump priming grants, which have led to an ability to get money to work out how to make applications to Horizon programmes—I am pleased to say that of those people who received those grants and put in applications, 100% were eligible. Finally, European network programmes are being set up to link UK academic teams and industry to European teams in the most successful countries.