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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will take steps to utilise university research capability to develop economic clusters.

BEIS’s £40 billion R&D settlement across the Spending Review period, includes funding for university research and for universities to collaborate with business which will be critical to delivering the ambitions of our Innovation Strategy, and will contribute to the development of clusters across the UK, and support economic growth.

The Levelling Up White Paper sets out how we will support the growth of R&D hotspots across the UK by increasing domestic public R&D investment outside the Greater South East by at least one third over the Spending Review period and at least 40 percent by 2030, and piloting new Innovation Accelerators.

The White Paper also announced our new open data tool, co-developed by BEIS and NESTA, which provides high quality and accessible evidence to help develop and grow R&D clusters across the UK.