Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the value was of (a) R&D expenditure and (b) R&D tax credits as (i) payable credits and (ii) deductions to Corporation Tax for UK life science SMEs SIC codes (A) 21100, (B) 72110, (C) 72190 and (D) 86900 in each of the last five years.

HMRC publish annual statistics on Research & Development (R&D) tax reliefs: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/corporate-tax-research-and-development-tax-credit

HMRC do not break down the statistics on R&D tax relief claims into the detailed sub-codes mentioned in the question, and this information would only be available at disproportionate cost.

Support for businesses through R&D tax reliefs rose to £3.7 billion in 2015-16 (£1.8bn for the SME scheme and £1.9bn for the RDEC), up by almost a quarter from the previous year, supporting almost £29 billion of R&D expenditure.

Within the ‘Professional, scientific & technical’ sector in 2015-16, there were 6,980 claims in the SME scheme worth £400m and SMEs also made 770 claims in the RDEC scheme worth £45m.