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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to increase R&D spending in the UK.

The Government is providing the fastest ever sustained uplift in R&D funding, reaching £20 billion per annum by the end of the SR period – £5 billion more than 2021/22 with HM Treasury committed to £22bn in 2026/7 as part of our commitment to the target of UK economy-wide R&D investment reaching 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

In order to achieve 2.4% by 2027, we are mapping out the current private and public R&D investment by sector and modelling options for securing the necessary private sector investment, using a combination of policy tools across the R&D ecosystem – from innovation accelerators to the catapults, catalyst funds, and a range of fiscal incentives including R&D tax credits, the patient capital review, scale up capital taskforce, pension fund reforms and post-Brexit regulatory reform.