Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to ensure that money disbursed from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund through the life sciences sector deal is spread across the UK.

The UK has a number of world class life sciences clusters across the country and the Industrial Strategy’s aim is to distribute growth and opportunity, with investments going to projects around the UK. The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund projects are independently assessed by UK Research and Innovation on their quality and competitiveness of innovation. The data to early diagnosis and precision medicine challenge announced in the life sciences sector is being finalised for launch next year. Details on how businesses and researchers can apply will be available at the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund-joint-research-and-innovation