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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how funding for the construction sector deal will be used; and how the effectiveness of that deal will be measured.

The Government is committed to investing £170m through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund in the Transforming Construction: Manufacturing Better Buildings programme. This includes funding of £72m for activities undertaken in the Core Innovation Hub, a consortium of the Centre for Digital Built Britain, the Manufacturing Technology Centre and the Building Research Establishment - working across Coventry, Cambridge and Watford. We have also committed £36m funding for the Active Building Centre in Swansea to develop building materials that can generate power from light and heat; and a further £59m for Construction R&D and Research Programmes. Industry will align an estimated £250m of investment for these initiatives, as part of the sector deal.

The deal also includes our commitment to carry out the recommendations of the CITB review to support skills development, by creating new apprenticeship standards and increase the number of apprenticeships starts to 25,000 pa by 2020.

The Government is committed to publishing annual reports on progress against the commitments made in the Sector Deal.