Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the oral contribution of the Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology on 15 March 2023, Official Report, column 816, what the evidential basis is for saying that the innovation economy has increased from 1.7 per cent of gross domestic product to 2.8 percent.

I refer the Hon. Member to the answers I gave her on 30 November 2022 to Question 93719, and on 17 January 2023 to Question 122143. Following the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) R&D release, the Department believes that, if the ONS had calculated R&D as a percentage of GDP, it would have produced a figure between 2.6% and 2.7% of GDP for 2019 and between 2.9% and 3.0% for 2020. I used 2.8% in my oral reply as a shorthand for the approximate size of UK R&D in the economy.