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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 11 January 2020 to Question 130729 on Research: Finance, what estimate his Department has made of the average proportion of private sector R&D investment from charities and not for profit organisations; and if he will provide a breakdown of inward R&D investment from overseas in the latest period for which figures are available.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes data on UK Gross domestic Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD), and the latest release for 2018 stated the private non-profit sector funded £1,860 million, amounting to 5% of total UK GERD of £37,072 million. The equivalent percentages over the previous decade were also about 5%.

The same ONS release gave a figure for GERD funding from overseas of £5,028m in 2018, with £3,250m of this being performed by UK businesses, £1,562m by Higher Education, £172m by Government and UKRI, and £84m by the private non-profit sector.

A more detailed breakdown of the overseas funding of UK business R&D by product group is available in table 12 of the separate ONS release on UK Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD), while table 23 shows expenditure on R&D performed in overseas-owned UK businesses by product group.