Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what estimate her Department had made of the cost of (a) implementing and (b) running the Pioneer programme prior to the Government securing an agreement to join Horizon Europe.

As set out in the Pioneer Prospectus published April 2023, the government would have committed up to £14.6billion to implement and run the Pioneer Programme until 2027/28. This was part of a wider package of contingency measures the government developed in the event that the UK had been unable to associate to Horizon Europe and Copernicus.