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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to maximise the awareness of the Made Smarter Adoption North East scheme among SMEs in the manufacturing sector; and what progress he has made on establishing the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of that scheme.

The North East Local Enterprise Partnership and Tees Valley Combined Authority are jointly working to promote the scheme via local press, social media, e-newsletters, their websites, and targeted campaigns. The Made Smarter Adoption model is being independently evaluated through the Made Smarter North West Pilot, which ran from 2019 to 2021.