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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will guarantee that UK Research and Innovation will sign the terms of grants of researchers who have submitted successful bids for European Research Council advanced grants in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal before the advanced grant process has been completed.

The Government underwrite guarantee will cover funding for all successful UK bids to Horizon 2020 that are submitted before exit, even if they are notified of success after exit. This includes the 47 successful UK bids to the ERC Advanced Grant 2018 call which form part of the €540m funding recently announced by the European Commission for cutting edge research.

The UKRI portal was announced in the Horizon 2020 Technical Notice and is part of our plans to underwrite funding for UK Horizon 2020 beneficiaries in the event of ‘no deal’. In this scenario, UK beneficiaries who have registered on the UKRI portal will receive detailed information about how the guarantee will be delivered and the next steps that they need to take.

If the underwrite does need to come into effect, our delivery partner, UKRI, is ready to deliver and has planned to make the process as simple and effective as possible for UK beneficiaries.