Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what data her Department holds on the total value (a) public and (b) private investment in research and development by the Maritime sector in each of the last five years.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published detailed figures for shipbuilding R&D performed by businesses in the UK for years up to 2020, including how much of this was financed by the UK government, as part of its Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD) release. In 2020 this was £393m of which £356m was funded by the UK Government. Because of the recent ONS methodology changes, it did not publish this detail for 2021, but I hope it will be able to do so in future releases.

UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is partnering with the Department of Transport to provide £7.4m funding to establish a flagship UK national clean maritime research hub due to begin in September 2023. EPSRC also supports £58m of research in the maritime sector.