Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, what assessment he has made of regional disparities in the rate at which university research is converted into commercially successful spin-out companies.

University spinouts make an important contribution to regional economic growth, creating high-skilled jobs, attracting investment, and developing local innovation clusters.

Research England’s analysis of the new UK University spinout register (https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/business-community/spin-out-register) shows that spin-out formation broadly reflects the geographical distribution of university research capacity. Between 2013 and 2024 55% of spin-out activity was outside the Greater South East.

Across the spending review period, UK Research and Innovation is investing £7.4bn to support innovative companies’ and spin-out growth, including £284 million per year through the Higher Education Innovation Fund, and £30million through Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) to develop regional commercialisation ecosystems.