Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to Table 1f of the Office for National Statistics dataset entitled Research and development expenditure by the UK government, published on 30 March 2023, if she will make an assessment of the reasons for the decrease in total Departmental research and development expenditure excluding expenditure by the Ministry of Defence between 2020 and 2021.

UK Government investment in Research and Development is subject to changes between years that reflect the profile of long-term investments. The long-term trend is one of growing investment, with public expenditure on R&D set to increase to £20 billion per annum by Financial Year (FY) 2024/25 - a cash increase of around a third compared to FY2021/22.

FY2020/21 saw significant one-off investments that did not continue to the same degree into FY2021/22. There was a one-time increase in infrastructure investment of £300 million via UKRI’s World Class Labs programme which concluded in 2021/22. FY2020/21 also saw a large increase in R&D expenditure for emergency Covid research, including vaccines.