Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether she has made an assessment of the adequacy of the granularity of data provided by the Office for National Statistics’ Business enterprise research and development, UK release.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is an independent body. Its most recent release on business enterprise research and development (BERD) was part of an on-going programme of work to improve economic statistics and data capture. The ONS figures provided the best estimate of R&D expenditure at the total UK level which had been validated against other available data. However, there was less data for validation and increased uncertainty in the estimates below the total BERD figures. The Government looks forward to further improvements from the ONS in how the statistics are compiled in future releases, including granular data on products and sectors.