Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to the Research and Development Mission in the Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper, if will publish estimates for increases in domestic and public investment in R&D outside the greater South East, by English region.

The Levelling Up White Paper set out 12 ambitious new missions that are targeted, measurable and time-bound declarations of the progress needed to achieve levelling up.

The Research & Development (R&D) mission is focused on domestic R&D spending - excluding funding for Horizon Europe and other EU programmes. Progress will be measured combining Government funding for R&D and Business Expenditure on R&D outside the Greater South East. Both metrics are available for UK countries and regions.

While some information on public R&D funding is already collected and published - such as UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) spending - there are currently significant evidence gaps that prevent policy makers from tracking and measuring where public funding is spent. The UK Government will ask the Office for National Statistics and the UK Government Office for Science to work with all Whitehall departments to collect and publish sub-national data on their R&D spending. This will allow us to track progress on the mission to 2030.