Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to help align UK Research and Innovation priorities with Government priorities.

As the UK’s largest funder of research and innovation, UKRI is central to delivering the objectives the government set out in the UK Science and Technology Framework, including across our portfolio of five critical technologies. UKRI is investing £250 million in Technology Missions to enable new and existing capabilities and capacity in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and engineering biology, with a further £70 million announced to support future telecommunications. On levelling up, UKRI is helping to deliver our ambition to raise domestic public investment in R&D outside the Greater South East, through its £100 million Innovation Accelerators programme. Furthermore, through UKRI’s declaration on support businesses to grow and scale, they will simplify and expand their support for innovative firms, aiming to reach a million innovators by the end of the year and halve the average time it takes companies to go from application to receiving grant funding.