Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to page 173 of the Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper, published the Government on 2 February 2022, what recent progress she has made on targeting at least 55% of domestic R&D funding outside the greater south east by 2024-25.

Following the establishment of DSIT, the department set the aim to invest, over the Spending Review period, a cumulative £1.3 billion more in R&D funding outside the Greater South East than in 2021-2022, superseding the referenced BEIS target.

DSIT and UKRI are working together to achieve this target, delivering the Innovation Accelerators programme to accelerate innovation clusters, investing £200 million in 12 projects across the UK through the Strength in Places Fund, by 2025, and in Autumn 2023 DSIT announced funding for a next-gen Exascale supercomputing facility in Edinburgh, and a new AI supercomputer for the national AI Research Resource in Bristol.