Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a mobile communications catapult centre to promote UK companies' participation in mobile communications supply chains.

Government would welcome further involvement of UK companies within the telecoms supply chain. As part of our upcoming diversification strategy, we are seeking to further
promote this involvement by lowering barriers to entry and supporting new entrants.

We are already working with catapult centres to realise our commitment to ensure the UK is a world leader in 5G. Through the 5G Testbed and Trials programme, we have partnered with Digital Catapult to provide a platform for the UK’s industrial sectors to accelerate innovation and digitisation and we are partnering with industry to build 5G Applications Accelerators in Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry for organisations to develop and trial innovative services using 5G.