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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the revised method of calculating private research and development expenditure, whether his Department will publish a new regional breakdown of (a) public, (b) private and (c) total research and development funding by region to reflect those changes.

The Government welcomes the independent Office for National Statistics (ONS)’ ongoing efforts to improve the accuracy of its research and development (R&D) funding data. The ONS will publish new total R&D funding numbers up to 2020, plus private R&D funding up to 2021, on 17^th November 2022.

The ONS are developing regional R&D statistics to support Government’s Levelling Up agenda. Producing these figures can be challenging, so they are exploring techniques to map where R&D is taking place, rather than where funding has been allocated. The ONS will publish regional public and private R&D funding statistics in early 2023.