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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the fall in the value of the Pound Sterling on (a) current and future UKRI budgets, (b) the capacity of publicly funded research to complete existing research projects and (c) public to private research and development investment ratios.

The Government has raised public R&D spending to its highest ever level, reflecting that innovation is vital to future economic growth. The Department maintains close oversight of the funding of the UK R&D landscape, including working with our partner organisations and key R&D-intensive sectors to understand the challenges they face.

Most public Research & Development (R&D) funding is spent domestically, and the impact of currency fluctuations is therefore limited in these areas. However, exchange rate volatility does have a significant impact on certain programmes, including UK contributions to international research infrastructures and organisations. BEIS and its partner organisations have foreign exchange hedging policies in place to manage currency volatility for contractual payments in non-sterling currencies.