Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the Office for National Statistics dataset entitled Business enterprise research and development UK, published on 22 November 2022, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of trends in the level of research and development expenditure in the (a) water supply, (b) sewerage, (c) waste management and (d) remediation activities Standard Industrial Classification divisions in the period between 2020 and 2021.

Table 8 of the ONS BERD release included figures for R&D performed by businesses by SIC division. This included the following estimates:

The new ONS BERD data shows different SIC divisions with different changes within an overall increase in total R&D expenditure. The ONS figures provide the current best estimate of R&D expenditure at the total UK level which have been validated against other available data. However, there is less data for validation and increased uncertainty in the estimates below the total BERD figures. The Government looks forward to further improvements from the ONS in how the BERD statistics are compiled in future releases.