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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make it his policy to commit to providing the equivalent of current EU research and development funding beyond 2020 in addition to the funding announced in the Autumn Statement 2016.

The Government is committed to ensuring the UK continues to be a world leader in international research and innovation. We protected the science resource budget at Spending Review 2015, and at Autumn Statement we committed to invest a further £2 billion a year in research and development by the end of this Parliament.

The research and development funding announced at the Autumn Statement is designed to deliver increased research and innovation outcomes for the UK, not to replace any EU funding. It is too early to speculate on the UK’s future relationship with Horizon 2020 and successor programmes.